The future of the American labor movement may lie just off the Las Vegas Strip, inside a squat building huddled in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino.
That's the home of the Culinary Workers Local 226, a fast-growing union of hotel and casino employees that has thrived despite being in a right-to-work state and a region devastated by the real estate crash.
More than 90 percent of Culinary's 60,000 predominantly immigrant workers opt to be dues-paying members, even though Nevada law says they cannot be forced to pay unions for their services.
As a result, housekeepers in most Strip hotels start at $16 an hour with free health care and a pension. Culinary's track record gives a dispirited labor movement some hope even as it hemorrhages workers and reels from the approval of a right-to-work law last week in union-strong Michigan.
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