Why Nevada SHOULD matter Nevada, Presidential Politics, The Big Strategy

Chris Bowers over at MyDD may be right that given the schedule and geography, Nevada may end up being another 1996 Delaware; an early state in the primary system that actually matters very little.

But, Nevada should matter.

First, its a Western State. Over the past six years or so, Western States have shown to be very interesting in how they choose Democrats they like. Think Jon Tester and the Salazar brothers.

Second, Nevada is the perennial "fastest growing state." That isn't so important,but in the same time, organized workers have grown in importance. In the same era of booming population and economy, the percentage of unionized workers in Nevada has also grown.

Actually, out Nevada, New Hampshire and Iowa, Nevada has the largest percentage of union workers (14.8 percent) it is also the only one that is growing union members. Las Vegas (where most of the Democrats in Nevada live), despite being dominated by the service industry, is also one of the most heavily union towns in the country.

Unions in Nevada work and they work in a region dominated by the service industry.

From the BBC:

In a country where 8% of private sector workers are in a union, around 70% of restaurant and hotel workers in Las Vegas work on a union contract, and the share is more than 90% on the all-important Strip.

...

"There's this myth that manufacturing jobs were always great jobs," said D Taylor, Secretary-Treasurer of the local 226.

"But before they were unionized, they were just like a lot of service sector jobs today: crummy jobs with high turnover and bad morale.

"We have to do the same thing here that we did in manufacturing. These service sector jobs have to become the new middle class jobs here in America - because they can't move out casinos to Malaysia."

And Prospect.org:

Something is right with this picture, so right that in an America where Wal-Mart and a thousand other unnatural shocks drive working-class living standards downward, we can scarcely account for it. The picture is incomprehensible unless you understand the role that a union -- Culinary Workers Local 226, the Las Vegas local of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE) -- has played in the lives of its 48,000 members, their families and the city as a whole.

Local 226 is probably the largest -- and surely the most remarkable -- local union in the United States. While most unions have been shrinking or struggling to hold their own over the past several decades, and while hotel union membership has declined from 16 percent of the hotel workforce in 1983 to 12 percent in 2000, Local 226 has grown by 30,000 members since its low point in 1988. It has done that by organizing virtually every hotel on the Vegas Strip, so that roughly 90 percent of the jobs in the city's major hotels are unionized. Considering that Nevada is a right-to-work state where employees can work in unionized workplaces without joining the union, this is a breathtaking achievement.

It won't be the lost suburbanite cruising cable that candidates will have to reach in Nevada but rather tens of thousands of unionized service industry workers, who are the pioneers of the new union economy in America.

These new unions, most notably (and as mentioned above) the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, will have major power in how these caucuses actually happen. Caucuses are different from primaries in that people actually have to meet for a few hours to participate. This means that organizes groups, like unions, can show extra power in the caucus process.

Emmett O'Connell | January 31, 2007 | Comment on This Post (1 so far) Permalink: Why Nevada SHOULD matter Nevada, Presidential Politics, The Big Strategy

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