Portland, OR
Five years and five months ago, 550 workers were forced on strike at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas after the hotel eliminated workers' pensions, slashed wages, cut health benefits, eliminated job security and refused to bargain with the workers' unions.
The hotel has hired replacement workers, which it indicates are permanent even though serious violations of labor law would make that illegal.
The hotel now faces serious criminal allegations based on extensive evidence that it has engaged in felony wiretapping, obstruction of justice, suborning perjury and other serious crimes.
The Frontier's actions come in a city where service employees have joined the middle class because they organized unions. The Frontier's actions are reprehensible in any community and doubly so in a city where so many workers have improved their lives through unions.
The AFL-CIO condemns the Frontier and applauds the resolve shown by the workers. The picket line by Frontier workers has stood unbroken for each of the nearly 2,000 days of the strike. Not a solitary employee has crossed the line.
Frontier workers have successfully isolated the Frontier from the working people of Las Vegas. The business community has isolated the hotel as well -- the strikers are regularly fed by union hotels repulsed by the Frontier's behavior.
Bringing the Frontier back within the bounds of the law and morality will be a victory for all working families in Las Vegas and an example to all bad employers.
The AFL-CIO therefore renews and strengthens support for the strikers and commits to bring massive nationwide public attention to the Frontier's wrongdoing. The federation will exert maximum efforts to ensure that all appropriate state and federal agencies investigate allegations of illegal behavior and that Frontier officials be prosecuted.