The debate was in its closing sequence when Donald Trump finally uttered the slogan that inspires derision in many of the workers at his Las Vegas hotel. Make America Great Again. From the cavernous trade union meeting room across town where some of those workers had gathered to watch the debate, an ironic cheer went up.
For these low-paid housekeepers, waiting staff, kitchen porters and cleaners from the Trump International Las Vegas, it was a night to come together and cheer on the woman standing between their boss and the White House. In a crowd made up overwhelmingly of women and immigrants, the tone was set from the moment Hillary Clinton first appeared on screen, setting off a roar that filled the otherwise deserted offices of the Culinary Union.
When Trump spoke of building a wall, people in the crowd shook their heads. When he accused Clinton of pushing for open borders, they yelled angrily at the screens. When he warned of all the “bad hombres” out there, the crowd erupted in laughter. “Oh my God,” came an incredulous voice from the row nearest the big screens.
For Carmen Llarull, a 64-year-old housekeeper at Trump's hotel, the debate only confirmed what she already believed. "She cares about families. She cares about children. She cares about people like me," says Llarull, who came to the US from Argentina more than three decades ago. In her view a Trump victory would be "a nightmare".
Management at the hotel – a luxury high-rise, half-owned by Trump, that looks like a shimmering bar of gold on the Vegas skyline – have been locked in dispute with their 450 workers since last December, when staff voted by majority to unionise. The hotel challenged the vote at the National Labour Relations Board, but while the owners’ case was rejected, they still refuse to negotiate.
It's a stance that puts Trump International at odds with most hotels on the Strip, which recognise the Culinary Union and negotiate contracts for their staff (the other large non-unionised hotel is the Venetian, owned by the large Republican Party donor Sheldon Adelson).
Without contracts, workers at Trump International earn on average $3 less than their counterparts in other hotels, and the hotel pays neither pension nor healthcare contributions.
Her $14-an-hour housekeeping job leaves Llarull with barely enough to provide for her family, pay her insurance and cover the cost of her weekly medicine. She finds it galling to listen to Trump champion the little people and denigrate immigrants like her. “My daughter is in the navy. My granddaughter is in the air force. He can’t say that we’re not good people. He doesn’t know us. He needs to listen to us, because he has a lot of things to learn from us.”
At a protest outside Trump International earlier in the day, Llarull wore a sash – the kind that a woman at one of Trump’s beauty pageants would wear – marked “Ms Housekeeping”.
Celia Vargas, a 58-year-old, originally from El Salvador, recalls how excited her family were when she got a job as a housekeeper at the Trump hotel three years ago. "But the reality, when I started. . . " She cuts herself off. "I think we have a right to get union representation, health insurance, dignity in retirement."
Labour board
Vargas and others say that after the staff vote took place last December, some employees were given fewer shifts or told to clean more rooms. According to the Culinary Union, five workers who wore union badges to work were sacked and were only reinstated, with back pay, when they took a case to the labour board.
"We're here making a business very successful for him and his group," says Jeffery Wise, a waiter at the hotel. "All we want is for him to say: 'Hey, we appreciate all the effort you put in, let's sit down and see how we can make things better for you as well'."
One of the most high-profile local backers of the Trump hotel workers is the young state senator Ruben Kihuen, whose family moved from Mexico to the US when he was eight years old and is now running for a seat in Congress.
Kihuen’s mother, Blanca, is a housekeeper of 22 years at the MGM Grand Hotel on the Strip. “It is not people like Donald Trump who make America great,” Kihuen says. “It’s people like my mother and these workers who make America great. If Donald Trump wants to make America great, he could start right here at his own property.”
But perhaps the workers' most powerful ally is the union itself. With its 57,000 members, the Culinary Union is a serious force in Nevada politics, with an election machine that excels at reaching the key immigrant communities of Las Vegas.
This year, that machine is being pressed into service against Trump and for Clinton, whose positions on healthcare, immigration and workers’ rights have won her the union’s endorsement. Led by 100 Las Vegas hotel workers who have taken leave for the duration of the campaign, union representatives have so far knocked on 130,000 doors and helped more than 8,000 people to register to vote. The union has also worked with hotels on the strip to ensure that thousands of workers will be able to vote during their lunch break, with the help of a specially-arranged bus service.
The more Clinton imposed herself on the final debate, the more the tension eased among the Trump hotel workers gathered in the union building. She is now within touching distance of the presidency, and they could feel it.
"She did a good job," says Trump hotel worker Elsabeth Mogues, originally from Ethiopia, whose vote for Clinton will be her first since securing US citizenship. "She was calm, and she cares about us women."
And what of Trump’s performance? “Same old, same old,” Mogues responds. “We have gotten to know all about him.”
