Culinary Workers Union

The Culinary Workers Union, UNITE HERE Local 226 is a local union affiliated with UNITE HERE which operates in the Las Vegas metropolitan area of Nevada. Members include a variety of occupations organized along craft lines working in restaurants, hotels and laundries, in the casinos in the Las Vegas metropolitan area and Reno, as well as Harry Reid International Airport and Valley Hospital Medical Center. While most Culinary members work in casinos, the union does not represent dealers and other employees directly providing gaming services. The union also has a partnership with the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas, which Hattie Canty, the first African-American woman elected to be president of the Culinary Union, was instrumental in organizing. Local 165 of UNITE HERE represents bartenders in Las Vegas although the two locals negotiate contracts in tandem.

With 60,000 members, the Culinary is the largest union in the state of Nevada. The union tripled its membership between 1990 and 2020, even as labor union membership declined nationwide in the same time period. According to labor journalist Steven Greenhouse, it has "catapulted thousands of dishwashers, waiters, and hotel housekeepers into the middle class, even though those are poverty-level jobs in many other cities." Despite Nevada's status as a "right-to-work" state, around 97% of bargaining units choose to join the Culinary Union and pay dues. This has led The New Republic to call the Culinary Union "America's greatest modern labor success story."

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and its negative impacts on the Nevada tourist industry, more than 98% of the union's members became unemployed in 2020. During the pandemic, the union provided 18 months of free health insurance to laid-off members and distributed over 475,000 baskets of food to hospitality workers' families in need. It also lobbied for Nevada's Senate Bill 4, which instituted COVID-19 workplace safety regulations for the state's hospitality industry, and Senate Bill 386, which guaranteed laid-off hospitality workers the right to be rehired into their old jobs when casinos and other businesses reopened.

On September 27, 2023, the union's Las Vegas chapter voted to authorize a strike. A tentative deal was then reached on November 8, 9 and 10, 2023 to prevent a strike. The new five year contract would then be ratified with 99% approval when voting concluded for Caesar's Entertainment, MGM Resorts and Wynn Resorts workers on November 20, 21 and 22.