A labor union, also called trade union, or worker’s union is an organization working on the betterment and the protection of the rights of the employees. They help the workers negotiate better terms with the employers over the wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions.

These unions are becoming more and more important in the face of the novel coronavirus pandemic, which has caused a huge stir in the business world. With lots of skeptics going so far as to state that the whole pandemic is a big hoax even in the face of huge data regarding the deaths and infection rates from all over the world.

Some of the companies do not take the necessary precautions seriously and thus end up with complaints left and right. The casino industry has come under a lot of scrutinies in recent years for the way they treat their employees and even more so when it came down to their treatment of the coronavirus pandemic.

At this point, the largest employee union in the United States of America is planning on writing a lawsuit against Las Vegas casinos due to their improper and inadequate response to the safety and protection regulations for their workers.

Las Vegas casinos were given a green light on June 4th to open their doors. However, this was supposed to be taken in a different light with a big chunk of safety regulations for the employees as well as customers.

Since Casinos are places where people gather and touch the machinery to operate, be it slots, or cards to play with, the transmission of coronavirus could easily get out of hand.

In face of lack of such regulations on the employers’ parts, the Culinary Union has announced that the casinos should have been much more cautious once the doors were flung open as there is an increase in the coronavirus cases overall in Vegas.

The Union wants to ask the judge to force the employers to focus on the health and safety regulations more. This is going to be done via the Labor-Management Relations Act.

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The Labor-Management Relation Act (LMRA), or better known as the Taft-Hartley Act, is the United States federal law enacted in 1947, that restricts the activities and power of labor unions.

The purpose is to not only protect everyone in the workplace but also promote economic development as well as fair labor practices, democracy, peace, and social development.

Generally, it covers the private sector. Government agencies are excluded from this act with the exception of the National Bank and mail contractors. Due to this, a lot of states have enacted their own laws under their jurisdiction. The LMRA also does not apply to independent contractors as they are not considered employees.

The Culinary Union is scheduled to have a press conference according to its own website. The director of Communications and Digital Strategy Bethany Khan highlighted that the lawsuit alleges that casino hotels have not set in stone the required precautions to protect workers, their families, and overall communities from the spread of the highly infectious COVID-19 virus.

It needs to be highlighted that the current rules and procedures that are in place are highly inadequate and seem to be working only in terms of just having something in case someone inquires rather than actual safety and protection rules.

It is worth noting that over 60,000 different casino employees across Las Vegas as well as Reno are represented by the Culinary Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165.

These two have been relentlessly fighting for better protection and safety in the workplaces ever since the casinos opened including the demand for implementation of mandatory testing as well as the issuance of face masks by the casinos to their employees. Unfortunately, a lot of gaming institutions were reluctant to follow these rules.

According to the union itself, 55% of the operators are providing testing for their employees while 55% of the institutions are ambivalent to this request.

The lawsuit itself focuses on the companies, which have failed to warn the workers about the possible risks associated with working in the public sector to their employees.

This extends to the provision of proper disinfectants and paid quarantining of the worker in case anyone in the working space tests positive for COVID-19. The Culinary Union is demanding higher safety standards for all of the hospitality and gaming sector workers in the state of Nevada and is working hard on tracking what the employers are doing to prevent COVID-19.

In addition to this, hotel services have also come under fire from the Union officials as apparently only two hotels are cleaning the guest rooms on a daily basis, which is a condition ordered by the governor of Nevada Steve Sisolak once he started pushing the economy to come back to life.

According to the union’s website, most of the institutions have safety plans in place however there still are some exclusions.

Sisolak has issued an official statement making the face masks mandatory to use in the whole state of Nevada as of last Friday. This was a response to the increase in the coronavirus cases all across the state, which creates a threat that the state will have to shut down again if the infection rates do not go down.

This means that the devastating effect of the lockdown will have even more dire implications. It is worth noting that not everyone has huge amounts of savings sitting on their bank accounts and most people do not have any at all.

The governor has stated publicly on the official website that by this decision he is covering the opportunity to limit the risks of exposure and infection. This is the effort to keep the businesses open for the economy to start operating efficiently again as this is having a huge impact on the livelihood of people.

The statement also highlights that it is crucial for the state of Nevada to stay safe and somehow keep the infection under control. The face masks and the importance of routine checks has to become a new part of daily life until the vaccine is going to be available to protect the society from outbreaks.