When workers at three Station Casinos properties in Las Vegas, Nevada — the Red Rock Casino Resort & Spa, the Boulder Station Hotel & Casino, and the Palace Station Hotel & Casino — started organizing to join the Culinary Workers Union in 2019, Station Casinos management kicked off a heavy-handed union-busting campaign. Now, thanks to a first-of-its-kind National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling, the casino chain may be forced to recognize a union despite its workers not having won a union election.

According to the National Labor Relations Board earlier this week, managers engaged in “serious pervasive unlawful misconduct,” including, most colorfully, serving hundreds of Station workers free steaks branded with the words “VOTE NO!” That incident took place two days before the workers voted in an NLRB union election in 2019: the result was 627 to 534 against joining the Culinary Workers Union. According to the board, the company did this because the quality of food served to workers was a major concern among employees. The NLRB found that the company’s misconduct began well before the NLRB vote and continued for months following it.

“The whole record reflects that [Station Casinos’] extensive coercive and unlawful misconduct stemmed from a carefully crafted corporate strategy intentionally designed at every step to interfere with employees’ free choice whether or not to select the Union as their collective-bargaining representative,” the board members wrote this week in their decision on the case, which involves sixteen unfair labor practice (ULP) charges filed by the union. “The centerpiece of [Station Casinos’] unlawful campaign was its tripart message promising and granting employees tremendous new benefits without the Union, threatening to withhold or withdraw these benefits if employees selected the Union, and implicitly threatening that selecting the Union could only lead to years of fruitless bargaining without any improvement to working conditions.”