Despite declining membership rates, Nevada labor unions ensure rights and protections for 166,000 workers in the Silver State.
While the Las Vegas Strip is fresh off its first year fully unionized, union membership in the U.S. is generally stagnant or declining. Even in Nevada, membership in labor unions has slipped from 12.7% to 12.1%, though this right-to-work state still surpasses the national average of 9.5%.
Unions took root in Nevada’s Old West days, and soon branched off into fields like hospitality, construction, education, and public safety. Unions have faced unprecedented times in the Silver State, including during the fight for women’s suffrage and massive construction projects like the Hoover Dam.
Though unions have their own set of critics, they help ensure the rights of workers in Nevada across a wide range of fields, from old-school miners to the state’s newest group seeking unionization: sex workers.
Here are a few recent labor union wins in Nevada that you should know about:
Affordable housing development to use union labor
An affordable housing project in East Las Vegas will be the first of its kind using union labor. The $450 million redevelopment project is expected to transform the former Desert Pines Golf Club, located off East Bonanza and North Pecos roads, into an accessible master-planned community. With a projection of 3,000 jobs, the Southern Nevada Building Trades Unions deal ensures that at least 50 percent of the workforce will be Nevadans. Construction on the project is expected to begin in the summer of 2026.
Teamsters Local 533 is growing
Workers at Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits and motor coach drivers and dispatchers at Diversified Transportation are the newest members of Teamsters Local 533 in Reno, Nevada. The local chapter was chartered in 1934 and represents about 2,500 workers in Northern Nevada across various trades.
Historic wage for home health care workers
In 2024, Nevada’s largest healthcare and public service union, SEIU Local 1107, negotiated a wage increase to $17 an hour for a group of almost 300 home care workers, employed by Consumer Direct. This rate is above the state-legislated minimum of $16 (a 42% funding increase from the previous rate of $11 an hour), according to a press release. It was expected to be the first of many contract settlements for Nevada home care workers. SEIU Local 1107 represents over 20,000 workers.
Labor unions in Nevada continue to make history
Despite the national decline in union membership, labor unions in Nevada continue to fight for workers’ rights, with actions including lobbying for (and against) Nevada film studios, organizing by graduate students in the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE), and a variety of protests and strikes.
Local labor unions fight for workers’ rights by negotiating employee contracts, shaping public policy, driving voter engagement, and providing support to political campaigns.
From Nevada’s first union to a current battle to become the first state with a unionized brothel, here are five times labor unions have made history in the Silver State.
5. Nevada becomes the first state to form a miners’ labor union
The discovery of the Comstock Lode in Virginia City in 1859 sparked a silver rush as miners from around the country fled to Nevada in search of a better life. It wasn’t long before they turned their prospects to better working conditions, improved safety standards, and higher pay ($4 a day, according to a case study about Comstock miners).
The miners organized a union, the Miners Protective Association of Storey County (later known as the Storey County Miners’ League) in May of 1863, making it the first miners’ union in the country and arguably one of the first unions in the American West.
The Washoe Typographical Union, Local 65, which is now part of Communications Workers of America, Local 9413, claims to be the state’s oldest continually operating labor organization. The Nevada chapter was founded in 1863 to protect workers at the Territorial Enterprise newspaper, legendary author Mark Twain’s employer, in Virginia City. Its original charter was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1875, according to U-News.
4. Labor unions help women win the right to vote in Nevada
Women earned the right to vote in Nevada in 1914, six years before the federal ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Thanks go to the Nevada Equal Franchise Society (NEFS), which was formed in 1911. The group worked in alliance with labor unions to pass the state suffrage amendment, facing opposition from powerful banks, mining companies, and media moguls.
Learning from previous failed attempts, the suffragettes eschewed big cities for rural areas, reaching women throughout the Silver State. They distributed about 20,000 pamphlets called “Women Under Nevada Laws” by Goldfield attorney Bird Wilson to educate women on the subject.
The amendment ultimately passed by more than 3,000 votes: 10,936 to 7,258.
3. One of the longest labor union strikes takes place in Nevada
Six years, four months, and 10 days—now, that’s a strike—one of the longest strikes in the history of the United States. It started in 1991, when 550 hospitality workers at the former Frontier Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip walked off their jobs to protest cuts to their wages, benefits, and pensions. Organized by the Culinary Workers Union 226, Bartenders 165, Teamsters 995, Operating Engineers 501, and Carpenters 1780, the workers protested 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The strike ended in 1998 when Phil Ruffin bought the hotel-casino. He agreed to honor union contracts, including guaranteed wage bumps. Workers received back pay and benefits while also maintaining seniority and pensions.
Nearly 20 years later, in 2007, the Frontier was imploded to make way for Wynn Resorts.
2. The Las Vegas Strip becomes 100% unionized
The Fontainebleau Las Vegas on the Las Vegas Strip signed a contract with the Culinary Workers Union 226 in December 2024, so that as of January 1, 2025, the Strip became fully unionized. This was considered a major accomplishment for the 90-year-old union, which, along with Bartenders Union Local 165, represents close to 60,000 workers in Las Vegas and Reno.
A union contract includes standard protections such as health insurance, a legal service fund, a pension, and safety protections.
1. Nevada sex workers fight for their rights
Sex workers at the closest legal brothel to Las Vegas are fighting to unionize in the only state where it’s legal to purchase sex, the AP reports. If the workers at Sherri’s Ranch succeed, the Pahrump brothel will become the first in the nation with a union. There are legal brothels in 10 of 17 Nevada counties, excluding larger ones like Clark and Washoe.
The workers submitted their petition to unionize under the name United Brothel Workers, represented by the Communications Workers of America. The move reportedly came after a contract dispute, and several sex workers involved in the unionization effort have since been fired.
Prostitution is illegal in most countries and unregulated in others. The government of Spain approved a union for sex workers in 2018, but a court struck it down.
Sex workers historically stayed quiet about workplace issues due to the stigma of the industry. “All workers are guaranteed certain human decencies and dignities, and the right to organize is one of those,” Marc Ellis, state president of the Nevada Communications Workers of America, told the AP.
