Crazy union fails in bid to block UFC fountain

The Culinary Workers Union Local 226 has for years failed in its attempts to unionize the Station group of hotel-casinos in Las Vegas. Station Casinos is owned by Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, who are also majority owners of the UFC.

Although the UFC has nothing to do with culinary workers, and indeed provides union work at arenas across the nation, it has for years been a target of Local 226.

In their latest failure, Local 226 tried to block a fountain in front of the proposed new UFC headquarters.

Alan Snel has the story of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

This time the Clark County Government Center has become the octagon.

Union leaders are attempting a rear naked choke on the UFC by opposing a recent County Commission approval of an outdoor water feature at UFC’s proposed new global headquarters in the south valley.

The Culinary union charges the water feature is decorative and wasteful at a time when businesses are being asked to conserve water.

Filing an appeal with the commission to reconsider its decision, the union argues the commissioners approved the UFC’s water feature even though county planning staffers recommended denying it.

But commission Chairman Steve Sisolak countered, saying the water feature is not decorative and that it’s actually a shallow pond serving as a functional part of a cooling tower.

Sisolak explained Tuesday that staff initially recommended against the water feature because they misunderstood the UFC application before realizing it was part of the cooling tower and made to look attractive.

Indeed, Nancy Amundsen, director of department of comprehensive planning, wrote to a county commissioner: As I stated at the public meeting, upon learning that the proposed water feature at the UFC Headquarters was actually a necessary and functional component serving an allowable use (the cooling towers), under Title 30, the regulation would be exempt …

I don’t believe it’s just about the water feature, Sisolak said of Local 226’s opposition to the cooling pond at UFC’s new headquarters.

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Unable to openly offer rational criticism of the UFC, Local 226 has created an increasingly bizarre series of front groups purportedly made of citizens concerned about MMA, that are in reality a union group concerned about a casino chain.

Anti-UFC steps the crazy union has taken include:

•Manufactured concern among prominent Jewish figures in New York that that Abu Dhabi is a minority owner of the UFC.

•Backed anti-MMA legislation in New York;

•Called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate UFC parent company Zuffa;

•Launched a website complaining that UFC President Dana White swears a lot;

•Launched an online petition calling on FOX to back away from a deal to broadcast UFC events;

•Demand Anheuser-Busch pull its Bud Light sponsorship of the UFC;

•Supported wacky MMA legislation in California;

•Demanded the Marine Corps cut ties with the UFC;

•Demanded that OTM cut ties with the UFC;

•Asked FOX to remove UFC lightweights Jeremy Stephens and Abel Trujillo from their UFC on FOX 5 fight for having a record;

•Petitioned Toys”R”Us CEO Gerald Storch to pull all UFC related toys from the company’s stores;

•Sought to bar minors from UFC Boston; and

•Complained that a local gay and lesbian community center is honoring the UFC.

Organized labor has lifted tens of millions of exploited workers into the middle class. But the Culinary Union is trolling; It is not okay.