The Online Weekly Community Newspaper of Associations, CVBs, and Hotels
Station Casino Files Constitutional Challenge Against
National Labor Relations Board
By Jordan Bradley
Las Vegas-based Station Casinos on October 22 filed a constitutional challenge against the National Labor Relations (NLRB) Board in an attempt to halt two complaints of union-busting from the board.
The casino resort company is alleging that the NLRB does not have the authority to prosecute claims against businesses such as Station Casinos.
“Station Casinos has taken the extraordinary step of suing the NLRB because the NLRB system has failed it and many other companies and, more importantly, threatens to deprive Station Casinos’ team members of their right to choose whether to be represented by a union or not,” Station Casinos stated.
The casino hotel operator is seeking “a temporary and permanent injunction to halt pending proceedings” related to an April 2021 complaint that the Station Casinos brand’s parent company, Red Rock Resorts, “used the COVID-19 pandemic layoffs to undermine Culinary Local 226 union-affiliated workers and union representation in the company,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.
In June, the NLRB ordered Red Rock Resorts to bargain with the union, upholding an administrative law judge’s 2022 decision that found the casino operator was in violation of the National Labor Relations Act over several incidents.
“Across the country, corporate tactics aimed at weakening worker rights and protections are being exposed and dismantled, as most courts have seen through these meritless arguments and rightly rejected them,” said Ted Pappageorge, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 226, about the casino operator’s filing. “We expect the same outcome in Station Casino’s baseless lawsuit.”
Station Casinos alleges that NLRB “proceedings are not designed to achieve a just and efficient resolution,” according to the complaint, “but rather, they are designed to create a process so unwieldy and all-encompassing that Plaintiffs’ right to defend themselves is virtually impossible and Plaintiffs are, thus, deprived of their constitutional right to a fair and impartial proceeding.”
The casino hotel operator is also seeking a ruling that would allow the U.S. president to remove board members and administrative law judges from serving on the NLRB without cause.