Las Vegas workers to participate in minimum wage strike Tuesday

Workers fighting for a higher minimum wage will line the Strip and downtown Las Vegas on Tuesday as part of a coordinated workers’ strike that is expected to span 340 cities nationwide.

Those striking in Las Vegas will include fast-food and child-care workers as well as students and other “low-wage workers,” according to Laura Martin, associate director for the advocacy group Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada.

The first protest will start around 6 a.m. Tuesday on the Strip, Martin said. The second is scheduled for 5 p.m. in downtown Las Vegas.

Elsewhere, the protests could have a significant impact on travel as workers are expected to protest at 20 airports across the country.

At one of the nation’s busiest airports, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, hundreds of subcontracted employees who work as baggage handlers, cabin cleaners, janitors and wheelchair attendants will strike in protest of what they say is unfair treatment that includes “retaliation, intimidation, threats and harassment when workers attempt to join together to demand at least $15/hour,” the group said in a press release.

The strikes coincide with the fourth anniversary of the first strike from the Fight for $15 group in 2012, when 200 fast-food workers walked off the job at dozens of restaurants in New York in protest of low wages. Since then, the states of New York and California, as well as the cities Seattle and Washington D.C., have passed measures that will boost the minimum wage to $15 per hour.

Contact Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4683. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.