Andrea Lampros
On the northern end of the Las Vegas Strip, outside the Frontier Hotel and Casino, five picketers sat on a brick landing with dog-eared "On Strike" signs propped between their knees, listening to salsa music on an old radio. Half a block down, four more workers listened to seventies soul on a beat-up boombox. Nearby, a taped message from the Culinary Union crackled from a kiosk, appealing to tourists to support the strikers by refusing to enter the Frontier.
Across the wide street, a woman impatiently waited for a walk signal. She held a Starbucks iced coffee in one hand as she gestured towards the strikers with the other.
"They're the laziest picketers I've ever seen," she said to her friend.
"Wouldn't you be after so long?"
"They should get it over with and get back to work. Find another job."
"Go tell them that."
"I can't. They don't even speak English."
Most of the Frontier strikers did speak English, in fact, though often with a Spanish accent. During the six and a half long years of their strike, they had heard all kinds of insults and seen the words "Union Scum"
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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: The Real Las Vegas:Life beyond the Strip.
Contributors: David Littlejohn - Editor, Eric Gran - Photographer.
Publisher: Oxford University Press.
Place of publication: Oxford.
Publication year: 1999.
Page number: 181.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.
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