LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--After four major protests since January, union workers will begin to picket Deutsche Bank’s The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas every weekend starting Friday, August 16. Recurring protests outside the mega resort cast doubt on the bank’s strategy of accelerating asset disposal in order to comply with tougher regulatory requirements. Management appears uninterested in settling the labor dispute at its 3,000-room luxury casino resort, even though labor peace would likely help its sale prospects.
Publicly, the Cosmopolitan has stated that the contract negotiations do not involve Deutsche Bank.
“It is hard to believe Deutsche Bank, which owns the Cosmopolitan 100%, is not playing a role there, especially in the non-gaming areas where our members work,” said Ken Liu, a UNITE HERE spokesperson. “What would Deutsche Bank shareholders say if they were told by the management board that Deutsche had nothing to do with what happens at the Las Vegas casino it spent $4.8 billion to build?”
The Cosmopolitan’s chairman of the board is Fabrizio Campelli, who heads Deutsche Bank’s Group Strategy & Planning department (AfK). He is joined on the board by fellow bank executives Jeff Baer (Head of Global Logistics Services), Stuart Clarke (Chief Operating Officer, Americas), and Enrico Sanna (Head of Operating Assets in the Non-Core Operations Unit). Joseph Polizzotto, General Counsel for Deutsche Bank Americas, is an “advisor” to the casino company.
As the Cosmopolitan is the largest German-owned business in Las Vegas, its workers have met with the German honorary consul in the city to discuss the labor dispute. The German consulate general in Los Angeles has so far ignored Cosmopolitan workers’ request for a meeting to discuss the labor dispute and its implications for U.S.-German relations, especially in the context of the bank’s lobbying efforts against equal regulatory capital requirements for foreign banks in the U.S.
On behalf of the 2,000 workers in their bargaining unit at the Cosmopolitan, Locals 226 and 165 have proposed contract language on job security and work load that is based on the union standard on the Las Vegas Strip, where the unions represent 50,000 workers at most of the major properties.
UNITE HERE is the union of 250,000 gaming, hotel, and food service workers in North America.
