D. Taylor, president of the Culinary’s parent union, UNITE HERE, vowed retribution against Republican legislators who opposed the bill. “We’re nonpartisan, but we’re pro-worker,” Taylor said. “And when somebody doesn’t stand with workers, we’re against you. It’s that simple.”

The union is well known as the state’s most powerful organizing force for Democrats, and it opened the event noting the 2020 defeat of President Donald Trump.

Taylor brought Sandoval, the former Binion’s server, up to the front of the room with him as an example of the new law’s importance.

“It was a very simple proposition: We shouldn’t get penalized twice,” Taylor said of the bill. “We all had the tragedy of the pandemic, and we want to have the right to go back to our job. We might not go back, but we want to have that basic right. Pretty simple proposition.”