Las Vegas Strip Deaths Prompt Picket Lines
By Tony Illia
Outraged work crews walked off MGM Mirage’s $8.4 billion CityCenter jobsite Monday evening, two days after the Las Vegas Strip’s deadly game of construction roulette claimed another victim. Union frustration reached a boiling point after Saturday’s grisly fatality, the sixth in 16 months at the 76-acre, 18.67 million-sq-ft complex.
Workers from CityCenter and Cosmopolitan walked off the job and picketed Tuesday. An agreement between management and labor is expected to bring workers back to the jobsite on Weds.
Photo by Tony Illia |
Perini Building Co. of Phoenix is the general contractor, with New York City-based Tishman Construction Corp. as project manager.
On Saturday, around 7:00 a.m., Henderson resident Dustin Tarter, 39, was oiling the counterweight track system to a Terex-Comedil 35-ton hammerhead tower crane when he got stuck and was crushed to death, says Scott Allison, Clark County Fire Dept. spokesman. State law requires crane owner-operators to maintain and inspect the tower cranes throughout the course of construction. CityCenter has a total of 14 tower cranes to erect its six high-rise buildings.
The Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the accident.
On Monday at about 8:00 p.m., CityCenter workers were sent home after word of a strike circulated. About 100 union members responded by picketing that night and the next day along Las Vegas Boulevard in front of CityCenter and an adjacent Perini project, the $3 billion Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino. The raucous denim and work boot crowd came armed with cat calls and signs reading: “On Strike/Unsafe Job Site.”
“This is unacceptable,” says Steve Ross, secretary-treasurer of the Southern Nevada Building & Construction Trades Council, in a June 2 statement. “It is time to stop talking about worker safety, and time to start putting into place policies that are going to improve worker safety on this job site.”
The union called for immediate worksite safety assessments, on-site OSHA-10 training and full access to the jobsite by union officials and safety directors.
After meeting with union representatives on Tuesday, Perini agreed to the union’s demands in a written statement issued by Doug Mure, vice president of human resources and risk management: “Recent incidents on our Las Vegas projects are a major concern, and we are committed to collaboration with the building trades, subcontractors and suppliers to continuously improve our safety efforts for all of our operations.”
CityCenter will see 350 supervisory personnel and 7,000 tradesmen onsite during the peak of construction activity, which is about one third of Southern Nevada’s total union workforce. The project had been averaging around 4,500 people during the last month. Perini is running three shifts, six to seven days a week, with portions operating 24 hours a day. It has been spending over a $1 million a day in payroll.
The 2,998-room Cosmopolitan development has had two construction-related deaths since breaking ground in October 2005. The 6.9 million-sq-ft project by 3700 Associates LLC – an investment entity led by New York City-based developer Ian Bruce Eichner – will employ over 3,000 tradesmen during construction.
Work is expected to resume at both projects on Wednesday.
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