Maids working in hotels on Las Vegas strip want panic buttons

The union representing 14,000 hotel workers in Las Vegas is now asking hotels to give every housekeeper a "panic button” to help prevent assaults on hotel staff, a spokeswoman for Culinary Workers Union Local 226 told Business Insurance on Thursday.

The union is in negotiations, and the panic button is just “one of many” requests the union is proposing, the spokeswoman said. The request comes at a time of widespread media reports on housekeepers being assaulted in hotels there.

In one well-publicized incident in 2016, a 22-year-old man is accused of attacking and sexually assaulting a housekeeper who was cleaning a bathroom at the Boulder Station hotel-casino in Las Vegas.

In 2011, a 19-year-old man was arrested after a 65-year-old housekeeper was punched in the face and sexually assaulted inside a hotel room at Bally’s Hotel and Casino.