Learning from Las Vegas: Unions and Post-Industrial Urbanisation

Article Urban Studies 2015, Vol. 52(9) 1683–1701 Ó Urban Studies Journal Limited 2014 Learning from Las Vegas: Unions Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav and post-industrial urbanisation DOI: 10.1177/0042098014536787 usj.sagepub.com Mia Gray University of Cambridge, UK James DeFilippis Rutgers University, USA Abstract Las Vegas is often portrayed as the apogee of postmodern urbanism, but we argue that you can- not understand Las Vegas without understanding the role of unions in the City’s political economy. By focusing on the social relations surrounding workplace, class, and gender we highlight alternative versions of Las Vegas’ history. The Culinary Union, a UNITE HERE local, has intro- duced new institutional forms and played an active role in the local growth coalition. They have set standards around work intensity, training, and job ladders. Highlighting the ability of the union to affect these issues contributes to a counter-narrative about the City which stresses the agency of labour to actively produce Las Vegas’ cultural and economic landscapes. The postmodern narrative about Las Vegas hides these important lessons. Learning from Las Vegas can transform issues of signs and symbolism to issues of union organising and institutional structures in the post-industrial economy. Keywords institutional innovation, labour organising, local growth coalitions, place dependence, postmodern, UNITE HERE Received August 2013; accepted April 2014 Each city is an archetype rather than a proto- urban form has been treated as a main char- type, an exaggerated example from which to acter, in and of itself. In this narrative, Las derive lessons for the typical. Vegas is often portrayed as a postmodern Venturi (1977) fantasy world where what really matters are the City’s signs, symbols and facades; its For decades, the city of Las Vegas has been embrace of spectacle; and its ability to con- at the centre of many stories – not only in stantly reinvent itself. Here, the city is a film and novels, but also in promotional literature produced by local boosters, investors and academics. In many of these narratives, Corresponding author: Mia Gray, Department of Geography, University of Las Vegas has not only been a setting for Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge CB2 3EN, UK. scenes of avarice, vice, and greed, but its Email: [email protected] 1684 Urban Studies 52(9) malleable urban space competing for the Las Vegas is a postmodern landscape. tourist gaze and the gambling dollar where But that landscape, like all landscapes, is a landscapes, as well as fortunes, are made product of human labour (Mitchell, 1996). and unmade overnight. It is therefore also a city shaped and struc- In this account, Las Vegas is held up as a tured by one of the basic institutions that unique environment and a distinct mode of marked modernism – labour unions. Over development. And indeed, the region is dif- the years, Las Vegas has not only become ferent than most other metropolitan areas in the ‘hottest union city in America’, it was the United States. Tourism, gaming and the also the site of one of the longest running hospitality industries dominate the region labour disputes in modern American history. and the service sector makes up an unusually Las Vegas’ labour unions have created a mix large portion of its economic base. Las of older and newer institutional arrange- Vegas is therefore the quintessential postmo- ments that has resulted in higher wages and dern urban form and post-industrial eco- benefits for many working in the low-end of nomic landscape. the service sector (Gray, 2004). Unions have But what makes Las Vegas interesting is been a major actor helping deliver the quoti- not its inimitable character, but that it has dian routine of service-sector production in often been held up as an archetype, a model Las Vegas, but crucially, they have also been for emulation, an exaggerated form of the fundamental in shaping the daily patterns of American norm. From the work of Robert social reproduction in the lives of its Venturi and his associates at Yale, to work workers. by Mark Gottdiener and his colleagues, as By organising so successfully, unions have well as Sharon Zukin and her students, the transformed the region, and the power rela- image of Las Vegas as an extreme, but nor- tions that partially constitute it. In 1997, the mal, American city has run through the aca- then AFL-CIO president John Sweeney pre- demic understandings of the city. dicted that ‘just as surely as New York set Las Vegas has been a favourite case study the (labour union) standards for the past 100 for postmodern scholars who, following in years, Las Vegas will be setting them for the the footsteps of Venturi and his colleagues, next 100 years’ (Associated Press, 1997). stress the City’s playful juxtaposition of Thus, Las Vegas is being held up once again kitsch and simulacra. These accounts stress as a model for the nation; Las Vegas is a city Las Vegas as a symbol, image, or represen- to learn from. tation. Although these stories of Las Vegas In the next section, we analyse the exist- are appealing, and certainly entertaining, we ing literature and argue that it offers an argue that they are incomplete, they encour- incomplete account of the dynamics of the age a fundamental misunderstanding of the City. We then explore union strategies and city, and that, ironically, they erase the city’s successes in Las Vegas. Through interviews social history – struggles around class, immi- with local union officials and secondary data gration and ethnicity. This typical postmo- and literature, we explore the extent to dern narrative about Las Vegas ignores the which the Las Vegas union movement, par- political economy of the city – workplace ticularly the unions organising in the hotels relations and class and ethnic conflict are and casinos, have produced a different almost completely absent from this litera- model of post-industrial labour relations. ture. This would be an oversight in studying Finally, we look at the union’s role in the any city, but it is a particularly important local growth coalition and the relationship omission when analysing Las Vegas. between place and space in this model of Gray and DeFilippis 1685 trade union organising. Ultimately, we argue chapels, and parking lots, and the ornamen- that there are important lessons to be tation and monumental quality of the build- learned from Las Vegas, if of a very different ings. They state, ‘Symbol dominates space nature than Venturi and his colleagues origi- . Because the spatial relationships are nally intended. Other cities and regions made by symbols more than by forms, archi- struggling with the growth of the new service tecture in this landscape becomes symbol in economy can learn about trade union orga- space rather than form in space . The sign nising and new institutional forms in a post- is more important than the architecture’ industrial context. (Venturi et al., 1977: 13). This leads to their logical conclusion that, ‘If you take the signs away there is no place’ (Venturi et al., Las Vegas without agency 1977: 21). In many ways Las Vegas has been under- Many have followed Venturi and his col- stood as the archetype of American urbani- leagues both in their fixation on the signs sation in the last 30–40 years. With the and symbols of Las Vegas and in the later exception of Los Angeles, probably no growth of the fantasy worlds of the massive American city has attracted the kind of corporate casinos and resorts. George Ritzer attention that Las Vegas has in terms of rep- states that: resenting the emerging forms of urbanisation in the postmodern world of signs, multipli- the simulated character of these settings helps city of meanings and consumption.1 This to make them magical. Thus Disney and Las Vegas can juxtapose a wide range of fake has taken numerous cultural forms including worlds within a single geographic area. film, photos and other visual mediums; Visiting so many ‘real’ worlds would require novels and popular press; as well as aca- far more expensive and time-consuming demic scrutiny. While there isn’t the space around the world journeys. Instead, one can here for a full discussion of all of that litera- magically visit their simulations in a single ture, a brief set of highlights should suffice. locale. (Ritzer, 2000: 190–191) It was the work of Yale architects Venturi, Brown and Izenor which drove the Likewise, William Fox highlights the inter- intellectual understanding of Las Vegas as section between simulacra and reality in the the crystallisation of new American urban- City’s use of public finance for new forms of ism, and their call for us to ‘learn from Las private museums. ‘Las Vegas offers us a fake Vegas’ has been heard and echoed many Venice with real paintings by Italian times over. Their work is important there- Renaissance masters. The fact that the spec- fore, because they see the significance of Las tacle is augmented by genuine art-works Vegas in both its role as the exemplar helps make it all the more believable as a American city, and its emphasis on symbo- whole’ (Fox, 2005: 168). The question, how- lism and representation over social relations, ever, is not so much whether Las Vegas is structures and even the built form (a bold authentic – a question that itself begs for statement, indeed, from architects). In so clarity on the all too elusive meaning of doing, they consciously held up Las Vegas ‘authentic’ (see Zukin, 2009) – but how we as an archetype –‘an exaggerated example understand it and its importance as a city.

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