Culinary Workers Union member Annette De Campos (right) talks with a voter as De Campos canvasses a neighborhood in Las Vegas. Photo by Isaac Brekken
Excerpts from the San Francisco Chronicle:
To many Nevada union waitresses, housekeepers and bartenders, this campaign is more than another political race. It’s personal. They are fighting the boss.
“We have to defeat this narcissistic, racist, sexist —hole called Donald Trump,” Tefere Gebre, executive vice president of the national AFL-CIO, said in a rousing pep talk to more than 100 union organizers Saturday inside the Culinary Workers Union Hall, with a piñata in Trump’s image wearing devil’s horns hanging nearby.
Saturday was the first day of early in-person voting in Nevada, and union organizers kicked into high gear to get their members to cast ballots.
The motivation for the unionized hotel workers to cast ballots is as personal — and as succinct — as the white-lettered message on the red shirts organizers were wearing: “Defeat Trump.” Workers say they are paid $3 less an hour at Trump’s Las Vegas hotel, one of the few that don’t have union workers. Even though employees there voted in December to form a union, Trump has refused to negotiate with them.