Koch’s Las Vegas Investment Is Now Fully Unionized

Despite his long history of union opposition, billionaire businessman Charles Koch recently learned that you can’t build hotels and casinos on the Las Vegas Strip without triggering union membership drives. In December, the Fontainebleau Las Vegas hotel, co-owned by Koch, signed a neutrality agreement with unions for the first time, allowing its hotel workers to organize.

As a result, the powerful Culinary Workers Union Local 226, part of UNITE/HERE, and the Bartenders Union Local 165 led a successful organizing drive that resulted in its members voting almost unanimously to ratify a contract on December 31, 2024. In March, the last unorganized group of Fontainebleau hotel employees — valets — voted in favor of union representation by the Teamsters.

With the 3,300 workers at the Fontainebleau voting to join unions, the Las Vegas Strip is now totally unionized for the first time in its 90-year history. The Culinary Workers has 60,000 members and is the largest union in the state.

Some liken the Culinary Union to a political machine because of its ability to both maintain solidarity during strikes and get out the vote for politicians who support those strikes.

The Culinary Union is “one of America’s most effective social and economic justice organizations,” according to labor journalist Hamilton Nolan. The union’s organizing “never stops [and] is propelled by the fact that the union demonstrably improves the lives of its members,” Nolan wrote. “Building that array of member benefits, from health care to pay to job protections to a training academy to discounts on rental cars, never stops either.”

Fontainebleau Las Vegas 

A consortium led by Koch Real Estate Investments, an investment arm of Koch, Inc. (formerly Koch Industries), financed the Fontainebleau. Charles Koch and his brother’s widow, Julia Koch, are the majority owners of Koch, Inc., with each holding a 42% share in the corporation.

The Fontainebleau sat unfinished for 16 years because of changes in ownership, loss of funding for construction, bankruptcy, and lawsuits. In addition to Koch Real Estate Investments, the hotel is owned by the original developer, Jeff Stoffer, owner of a sister Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach. The amounts Stoffer and Koch have each invested are not publicly available, but with the arrival of Koch Real Estate Investments the hotel was able to secure a $2.2-billion construction loan in 2022.

In 2010, Stoffer lost bank financing, which forced the uncompleted hotel into bankruptcy. Corporate raider Carl Icahn then bought the property and sold it to private equity firms. At the beginning of the Covid crisis, with only 70% of the hotel completed, Stoffer bought it back through his company Fontainebleau Resorts, with financing from Koch. The 67-story, 3,644-room hotel — one of the largest in Las Vegas — finally opened in December 2023.

Despite the Koch network’s long-standing history of anti-unionism, the Fontainebleau now joins Georgia Pacific as another Koch company that has unionized.

Even as the Culinary Workers were organizing the employees of the Las Vegas Fontainebleau, across the nation Koch-funded groups continued their assault on workers’ rights.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate bill mill supported by Koch, produces model bills that state legislators push to pass to end collective bargaining for public sector unions, force frequent union recertification, preempt local labor laws, and curtail or eliminate occupational regulations.

Along with Americans for Prosperity (AFP), Koch’s astroturf operation largely funded by him and his donor network, ALEC has also been a major player in the ongoing fight to pass anti-union “right-to-work” laws, which are now in effect in 28 states.

As the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reported, the combined net spending of Koch-controlled organizations ballooned from $460.8 million in 2018 to $787.6 million in 2022, more than 90% of which was used to influence public policy and elections.

Along with a new contract, the Fountainebleau’s unionized workers now have access to legal aid, union-run health care clinics, training funds, and a pension.