Hundreds of hospitality workers at a Las Vegas casino walked off the job Nov. 15, launching the first open-ended strike in more than two decades for Nevada’s largest union.

The workers are members of the Culinary Workers Union as well as an affiliated bartenders union, which together represent some 60,000 workers in Las Vegas and Reno, including at most of the casino resorts on the Las Vegas Strip and in downtown Las Vegas.

The strike has grabbed headlines. Video of a protest last week posted to social media by the union showed members blocking a road in front of the hotel and police arresting union members.

The last time Las Vegas saw a similar labor dispute was in 2002, during a 10-day walkout by workers at the Golden Gate Hotel & Casino in downtown Las Vegas. It comes as Nevada’s gaming market and tourism activity on the Strip has been unexpectedly strong this year, dispelling investors’ expectations of a downturn in business.

Here’s what to know about the strike:

Why are the casino workers on strike?

With the strike in its second week, the Culinary Workers Union is hoping to pressure Virgin Hotels Las Vegas to agree to a new five-year contract with higher pay and better benefits for workers. The resort is located about a mile east of the Las Vegas Strip and houses more than 1,500 rooms and suites. The property is owned by several investment groups, including JC Hospitality and LiUNA Pension Fund of Central and Eastern Canada.

The hotel has balked at terms that other Las Vegas casinos consented to last year that gave workers a 32% raise over five years, said Bethany Khan, a spokesperson for the union.

Union officials said Virgin’s proposals have offered only meager wage boosts.

“Workers at Virgin Las Vegas deserve a first-class contract with fair wage increases, and they are organized and ready to strike for it,” Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union, said in a recent statement.

What does Virgin say about all this?

The hotel contends that the union’s demands are too costly and unrealistic.

“The Culinary Union’s current demand is not financially sustainable for Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, and we will not agree to the same contract that led to layoffs at other properties,” the hotel said in a statement. “Virgin Hotels Las Vegas remains focused on reaching a reasonable agreement that secures a brighter future for all of our 1,710 team members and their families.”

The hotel said the union has not engaged in meaningful negotiations in recent months.

“Despite Virgin Hotels Las Vegas agreeing to many of the Culinary Union’s demands and showing flexibility on critical sticking points, the Culinary Union has not seriously countered any of our economic proposals,” the hotel said.

Is this going to disrupt my upcoming trip to Vegas?

Probably not, unless you have plans to stay at the Virgin hotel or visit its casino, in which case it’s possible you might encounter picketing workers. The culinary union has said its strike has impacted the hotel’s housekeeping, food and beverage departments, and several of its bars and restaurants.

But the hotel says its operations remain up and running through the strike.

“Despite the Culinary Union’s attempt to disrupt operations, Virgin Hotels Las Vegas is open for business and continues to provide a memorable guest experience and exceptional guest service,” the hotel said in a statement.

Are other hotel workers in Vegas likely to strike?

No. About a year ago, hotels and casinos along the Strip narrowly averted a strike involving tens of thousands of hospitality workers by agreeing to a breakthrough deal just before a strike deadline.

MGM Resorts International, the largest employer on the Strip, and Caesars Entertainment reached a deal covering more than 30,000 hospitality workers.

Is this walkout connected to the hotel strikes in Los Angeles I heard so much about?

No. The Las Vegas standoff is not tied to strikes at Los Angeles hotels that began last year and stretched into this year. Roughly 60 hotels originally involved in rolling strikes at properties in Los Angeles and Orange counties have reached deals, giving non-tipped workers a total hourly boost of about $10 over four years .

However, both strikes represent efforts by local hospitality unions to secure gains for their members, and both are affiliated with the powerful Unite Here. The unions have used some similar tactics, such as calling out what they describe as union-busting activity by hotels owned by other unions’ pension funds.

This year, Unite Here Local 11 — which represents Southern California hospitality workers — criticized a carpenters’ union pension fund that owns Hyatt Regency LAX. And in recent days, the Culinary Union leading the Vegas strike has criticized the Laborers’ International Union of North America, or LiUNA, which has a Canadian pension fund that serves as majority owner of Virgin Las Vegas.

Culinary union officials sent a letter to LiUNA leaders criticizing Virgin’s hiring of temporary workers to replace striking union employees.

Virgin confirmed it has relied on temporary workers to keep operations running. LiUNA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

More than 3,000 fake Gibson electric guitars have been seized through the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex as part of a multiagency law enforcement investigation, making it the largest counterfeit musical instrument seizure on record, authorities announced Tuesday.

Africa Bell, port director for the Los Angeles-Long Beach Seaport, provided no details about suspects or details of the case because it remained active but said that the products — worth more than $18 million if they were legitimate — were probably destined for e-commerce.

Several red, black and orange electric guitars sat on stands and rested on tables as U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials announced the seizure during a morning news conference in Carson.

“These guitars you see on display around me and behind me may look real to you, but trust and believe they are not,” Bell said. “They are fraudulent, and they are part of a massive attempt to con the American consumer.”

Bell said while most shipments comply with U.S. importation laws, many do not.

“Finding contraband illicit goods and revenue owed to the United States government in this massive amount of cargo arriving here every day is like trying to find the smallest of needles and the largest of haystacks,” she said. “It’s a significant undertaking. This past fiscal year we prevented the entry of over $2 billion worth of counterfeit products into the United States. This is the highest recorded value to date.”

The case is being investigated by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigations and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan had a simple plan after graduating from college: Write some software that could assist their dads with all the paperwork that comes with being a contractor.

Two decades later, that idea has morphed into a Glendale company called ServiceTitan, which last year served some 8,000 plumbing, HVAC, janitorial and other firms with a soup-to-nuts software suite — and now plans to go public on Nasdaq under the ticker “TTAN.”

The tech company, which has raised about $1.4 billion in funding since its 2007 founding, did not disclose in the Nov. 18 filing how many shares it plans to sell or how much capital it wants to raise. A spokesperson declined to comment.

The initial public offering of stock marks a significant step for the company, which had filed confidential paperwork for an $18-billion offering in 2022, according to Business Insider, but didn’t move forward after the Federal Reserve sharply raised interest rates to combat inflation, freezing up the IPO market.

ServiceTitan — which makes most of its money charging a subscription for its services — reported revenue of $614 million in the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31, up nearly a third from a year earlier; and a loss of $195 million, 28% less than in fiscal 2023. It had about $147 million in cash and equivalents on hand as of Jan. 31, 2024, and was carrying $175 million in long-term net debt.

The company, which serves contractors nationwide, says it wants to expand the number of trades and markets it serves. It employed 2,870 workers as of July 31 at its Glendale headquarters and t offices elsewhere in the U.S. and internationally.

ServiceTitan has developed a web-based software that can manage all aspects of a contractor’s business, including booking appointments, generating estimates, processing invoices as well as payroll and dispatching workers. Clients range in size from family-owned contractors to large national franchises.

It estimates it receives about 1% of what its clients charge their own customers, which totaled $62 billion in the 12 months that ended July 31. Competitors include BuildOps, Housecall Pro, Jobber and other companies that charge subscriptions for their web-based business management software.

The founders immigrated to the United States in the 1980s as children: Mahdessian, 39, from Iran and Kuzoyan, 41, from Armenia. Mahdessian’s father started a contracting business, and Kuzoyan’s, plumbing. Mahdessian went off to Stanford and Kuzoyan got into USC, with the pair meeting at an Armenian students event.

After graduation, they started in 2007 building a simple program to track customer calls and marketing budgets, but their venture soon attracted other contractors. The duo scored a seed round of funding from Mucker Capital in 2014.

ServiceTitan also has gone on to make acquisitions and raise more than $1 billion from Iconiq Growth, Bessemer Venture Partners, Battery Ventures and others. Iconiq is the largest institutional shareholder of ServiceTitan, holding 24% of Class A shares.

The company’s share structure will ensure that control remains with the founders — Mahdessian is chief executive and Kuzoyan president — who will retain all Class B shares, which are entitled to 10 votes each.

Meritech Capital, in an analysis of the offering, said ServiceTitan appears to be eager to go public due to an unusual provision of its $365-million funding round in November 2022 when money was harder to come by. A so-called “IPO ratchet” protected participants by guaranteeing them more shares should the company’s IPO price decline below its funding-round valuation.

PitchBook valued the company at $7.6 billion at the time, meaning the IPO needs to trade above a “base” of $84.57 per share or ServiceTitan will have to issue more shares, Meritech said. The base per share price also compounds after a certain time, making it more difficult for the IPO price to exceed it.

“ServiceTitan is incentivized to get public ASAP,” Meritech stated in its report.

Lead underwriters on the IPO are Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Citigroup. The offering is expected to be watched closely for signs that the IPO market is making a comeback.