KVIG Informative

Las Vegas bartenders started organizing in 1934, when the Strip barely existed. Their union didn’t receive its formal charter until two decades later, and nine decades after that first organizing effort, its members were still walking a picket line outside a Strip casino.

Bartenders Union Local 165 traces its founding to 1934, according to the union’s own history, the same decade Nevada legalized casino gambling and Las Vegas began building the resort economy that would come to define it. The union did not receive its formal charter until June 15, 1954, according to Local 165’s own website — a gap of two decades between the first organizing effort among the city’s bartenders and the legal recognition that followed.

Local 165 is affiliated with UNITE HERE International Union, according to its own website, and represents more than 4,000 bartenders and apprentice bartenders across the Las Vegas Metro area. It operates alongside Culinary Workers Union Local 226, a separate Nevada affiliate of UNITE HERE that traces its own charter to Nov. 1, 1935, according to Local 226’s official history. The two unions bargain jointly with most Strip and downtown casino operators and jointly administer benefit funds covering their combined membership, according to Local 226’s history page.

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Local 226 and Local 165 together represent 60,000 hospitality workers across Las Vegas and Reno, according to a joint statement the two unions issued with Virgin Hotels Las Vegas on Jan. 22, 2025. That combined membership works in guest services, food service, housekeeping and kitchen positions across most Strip and downtown casino resorts, according to the same statement, and includes members from 178 countries who speak more than 40 languages.

Local 165 joined Local 226 on a joint picket line outside Virgin Hotels Las Vegas beginning Nov. 15, 2024, at 5 a.m., according to the unions’ own strike announcement. More than 700 hospitality workers took part, including guest room attendants, cocktail and food servers, porters, bellmen, cooks, bartenders and kitchen workers, according to the same announcement, which stated the walkout would affect all major areas of the property’s operations.

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Local 226, Local 165 and Virgin Hotels Las Vegas announced on Jan. 22, 2025, that they had reached agreement on collective bargaining terms, according to their joint statement, describing the outcome as a step toward a more collaborative working relationship at the property. The announcement closed the walkout that had begun more than two months earlier, on the picket line the two unions shared outside the resort.

Bartenders in Las Vegas started organizing nine decades ago and formalized that organizing seven decades ago. Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, built on the site of the old Hard Rock Hotel, opened on the Strip in 2021. Local 165 was already 87 years old by the time it got there — and last winter, it was still walking that property’s picket line like it had something left to prove.