Culinary Union reaches tentative 4-year deal with Eataly at Park MGM on the Strip

LAS VEGAS ( KLAS ) — The Culinary Union announced a tentative agreement with Eataly Las Vegas on a four-year contract — the union’s first with a restaurant since launching a campaign on Labor Day in September 2023 to organize 10,000 non-union restaurant workers in Las Vegas.

It will be the first union contract for Eataly, which opened in December 2018 at Park MGM Casino on the Strip. The contract will bring raises averaging $10 an hour for cooks and $3 for fountain workers, according to the union. The contract will cover 130 workers.

Those wage increases — the biggest since Eataly opened — will be retroactive to April 2024, the union said. Negotiations between Eataly and the Culinary Union began in May and the tentative agreement was reached on Oct. 2.

Additional benefits under the agreement include access to the Culinary Health Fund, protections for owners and successorship, and benefits such as the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas, the Culinary and Bartenders Housing Fund, the Legal Service Fund, and the Culinary Union Pension. Also, the contract strengthens protections for worker security regarding sexual harassment, technology, and immigration, among other standard union benefits.

The union’s leader said it’s trying to get contracts at other Strip restaurants in its drive to reach 10,000 workers.

“Eataly Las Vegas workers are the first workers to win union recognition, but they won’t be the last,” Culinary Secretary-Treasurer Ted Pappageorge said in a provided statement. “Currently, we have strong organizing campaigns continuing at Alexxa’s at Paris Las Vegas and Citizens at Mandalay Bay, and Culinary Union will launch more non-union restaurant organizing drives over the next coming months. We won’t stop organizing until we win higher standards for non-union restaurant workers across the Las Vegas Strip.”

The union provided a statement from one of the workers who will benefit, a fountain worker who has been at Eataly for a year. A portion of that statement:

“The opportunity to have amazing health care and not have to worry about when I can see the doctor or how much it will cost is very important to me,” Keila Cortez said. “It’s something we all need, especially as we get older. I’m proud to have negotiated a union contract and won a raise that will help us be more comfortable. Having the union contract and protections will also make us feel more secure. There are so many people in my family that work two or three jobs to get by, which is hard to see because I believe that everyone should only have to work one job in order to support their family.”

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