Region 28 issues complaint alleging Station Casinos used employee layoffs to undermine unions at 10 Las Vegas casino hotels during COVID-19 pandemic

This week, Region 28 of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a complaint alleging that Red Rock Resorts, Inc., Station Holdco LLC, and Station Casinos LLC, and 10 affiliated casino hotels in Las Vegas, Nevada engaged in a scheme to use employee layoffs during the COVID-19 pandemic to undermine unions representing or seeking to represent their employees.

The complaint alleges that during and after a state-mandated closure of gaming establishments in Nevada, Station Casinos began a course of unilateral actions, including laying off employees, terminating employees, implementing new health and safety standards, recalling employees, rehiring employees, and terminating laid off or terminated employees’ recall rights and benefits, all without bargaining with their employees’ unions.  Station Casinos allegedly implemented these actions in a selective and discriminatory manner that was calculated to dilute union support among their employees.

Station Casinos’ alleged unlawful actions against its employees were paired with messaging designed to denigrate the unions representing these employees.  Specifically, the complaint alleges that Station Casinos suggested to employees that their unions had been negligent in representing them during the COVID-19 pandemic, when, in reality, Station Casinos had unlawfully failed to give the unions timely notice of their unilateral actions and unlawfully failed and refused to bargain about them.

Station Casinos’ alleged unfair labor practices culminated in the unlawful withdrawal of recognition of LJEB as the collective-bargaining representative of food and beverage and hotel operations employees at Boulder Station Hotel & Casino and Palace Station Hotel & Casino based on anti-union petitions that Station Casinos unlawfully encouraged employees to circulate and sign.

Region 28 seeks for Station Casinos and affiliates to be ordered, among other things, to recognize and bargain with LJEB, International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 501 (IUOE, Local 501), and International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, District Council 16 as the collective-bargaining representatives of 12 units of their employees; rescind their unilateral and discriminatory conduct; and post, read, and publicize a notice to employees and explanation of rights reassuring employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act.

In a separate set of cases, the NLRB has also initiated contempt proceedings in federal circuit court in cases involving five other units of slot technicians employed by Station Casinos affiliates, based on allegations that their unilateral conduct and refusal to bargain during the COVID-19 pandemic violated court orders requiring them to recognize and bargain with IUOE, Local 501 as the collective-bargaining representative of the employees in those units.

A hearing on the allegations of the complaint will be held before an administrative law judge, and the NLRB will decide the cases after the administrative law judge’s issuance of a decision and recommended order.

Established in 1935, the National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal agency that protects employees, employers, and unions from unfair labor practices and protects the right of private sector employees to join together, with or without a union, to improve wages, benefits and working conditions. The NLRB conducts hundreds of workplace elections and investigates thousands of unfair labor practice charges each year.