In less than 100 years, Las Vegas and Southern Nevada has been transformed from a desert railroad outpost into the gambling and entertainment capital of the world. In the 1920’s and 1930’s Las Vegas was a desert town slowly evolving into a city. The streets were paved and lined with graceful shade trees, and permanent public buildings such as schools and courthouses. Then came the construction of Boulder Dam, later named Hoover Dam, at a site thirty miles south of Las Vegas. The dam proved to be a significant boost to Southern Nevada’s economy. During the dam’s construction, between 1931 and 1935, thousands of construction workers and their families flocked to Southern Nevada and Las Vegas. Las Vegas promoted itself as “The Gateway to Boulder Dam” to attract tourists. The legislation of gambling in 1931 would attract even more tourists eager to fill the gambling halls and hotels that had sprung up on Fremont Street. Soon, the raw gambling halls evolved into more refined casino’s with the construction of the first resort style hotel and casino along Highway 91, the future Las Vegas Strip. The opening that year of the El Rancho Vegas changed everything. The combination of a casino within a luxury resort hotel was far removed from anything that existed on Fremont Street. During the 1940’s came “Bugsy” Siegel’s Flamingo and so on into the 1950’s with the Desert Inn, the Sahara, the Sands, Riviera, and the Dunes. The construction of the resort industry had begun and forever changed the flat desert landscape of Southern Nevada.
With the United States interest in nuclear weapons testing and technology came the Nevada Test Site, and so did working men and women to construct and maintain this important piece of National Security.
City officials and hotel owners were eager to market Las Vegas as a resort and convention destination in the 1950’s even promoting the atomic blasts at the nearby Nevada Test Site as a tourist attraction. The Las Vegas Strip’s landscape changed even more with the construction of Caesars Palace, the precursor of the themed mega resorts that characterize Las Vegas today.
On June 1st, 1960, the Building and Construction Trades Department of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations chartered the Southern Nevada Building and Construction Trades Council. An alliance of affiliated construction Unions representing the hard working men and women that shaped Las Vegas and Southern Nevada into what we see today. The combined skills and Union construction knowledge from dam building to nuclear testing and mega resort construction can never be paralleled anywhere in the world.
We recognize as tradesmen and women that the future of Southern Nevada is as important as the past. We are dedicated to providing our contractors and business partners with the best the industry can provide. We have solidified our relationship with the Southern Nevada Water Authority, Clark County Department of Aviation (McCarran International Airport), Nevada Test contractors and the many world class hotel and casino owners along with the world’s best contractors with Project Labor Agreements.
We were created to establish consistent labor policies and procedures that benefit all parties, develop guidelines to resolve any unforeseen issues, provide opportunities for construction workers from the Southern Nevada area, support and promote community outreach and to provide construction safety, craft training and certification to our apprentices and journeyman.
