Yvanna Cancela, an organizer for Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Las Vegas, is being honored by the White House today for her work with immigrants, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. Cancela is the only union organizer to be named one of 11 honorees of this year's César Chávez Champions of Change awards, named after the United Farm Worker leader. She is being honored for her work in organizing Nevada residents in favor of creating an immigration process that includes a road map to citizenship.

Nearly 100 workers were arrested Wednesday night in Las Vegas as they engaged in civil disobedience to protest the Cosmopolitan casino's refusal to agree to a fair contract with its workers. As reported Wednesday, members of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and Bartenders Local 165 blocked the street on the Las Vegas Strip, leading to 98 arrests.

On Wednesday night, members of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and Bartenders Local 165 will engage in the first act of civil disobedience on the Las Vegas strip by union members in more than 20 years in solidarity with workers from the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas casino. The workers have been negotiating a contract with the casino owner, Deutsche Bank, for more than two years and they contend that the owner refuses to agree on measures that are standard in other major casino contracts on the strip. Workers plan to engage in action by blocking traffic. Contracts for workers on the Strip will expire June 1.

The Culinary Academy of Las Vegas, a partnership among the Culinary Workers Union/UNITE HERE Local 226, Bartenders Union/UNITE HERE Local 165 and 26 properties on the Las Vegas Strip, teaches students everything they need to know to get a position with good wages and benefits in the hospitality industry. The vocational classes, which range from two weeks to three months, kick off with a half-day class, which teaches students interview techniques and how to be gainfully employed on the Strip. In addition to training 35,000 workers since its inception in 1993, it also serves nearly 900 hot meals daily to disadvantaged youth, seniors and veterans in the surrounding neighborhood. This video highlights how students trained in this program will find promising careers.

Geoconda Arguello-Kline, a former housekeeper and Nicaraguan refugee, today was named secretary-treasurer of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 of UNITE HERE in Las Vegas. Arguello-Kline is the first Latina leader of the union and will represent 60,000 hotel and restaurant workers. 

D. Taylor, leader of UNITE HERE’s Local 226 (the Culinary Workers Union) in Las Vegas, has been elected president of the national union. He replaces John Wilhelm, who served as president since 2009.

Arlene Holt Baker is the executive vice president of the AFL-CIO. 

In the gambling capital of the country, labor and management are putting their chips on one very safe bet: training for workers.

Yesterday, I had the unique opportunity to visit the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas, a labor-management trust. The academy is the result of a collectively bargained labor-management partnership with UNITEHERE!'s Las Vegas Culinary Workers Union Local 226, Bartenders Union Local 165 and employers, including 26 major hotels and casinos on the Las Vegas Strip.

The academy provides training for hourly workers, many of whom are immigrants, who want to enter the hotel industry. It also provides upgrade education and training for current union members looking to brush up their skills and have greater career mobility in the hospitality industry.

The thousands of workers at Station Casinos, the third largest private employer in the Las Vegas area, have a simple request. They want a fair process, free of managerial interference, to decide whether to have union representation.