Diana Valles is the President of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Las Vegas, Nevada (2022-present).
Diana is a proud immigrant who was born in Chihuaha, Mexico, she moved to Las Vegas in 1988 where she has been a member of the Culinary Union for 34 years. She worked as a Guest Room Attendant at the Stardust Casino and then the Las Vegas Hilton. Later she worked as a Casino Porter and then a Cook at the Flamingo.
As a single mother, her desire to obtain better working conditions for working families led her to become involved with the Culinary Union. She became a Shop Steward and Committee Leader when she was 20-years-old during a difficult contract fight at the Stardust Casino, where Diana was helping to organize her coworkers to go on strike if the company didn’t agree to a contract.
After taking an organizing leave-of-absence from the Flamingo with the Culinary Union, Diana became a full-time Organizer in 2004 and supported the organizing efforts of the successful Aladdin (now Planet Hollywood) organizing campaign. For over a decade, Diana was one of the Organizing Directors of the Station Casinos organizing campaign. Station Casinos is Nevada’s third largest private employer. With 6,000 workers, the Station Casinos organizing campaign is one of the nation’s largest private-sector organizing drives. Under Diana’s leadership, workers at Palace Station and Boulder Station voted by a majority to unionize in a National Labor Relations Board election.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Diana led the Culinary Union’s internal organizing division to protect workers from the spread of COVID-19 in the workplace, engage guest room attendants to fight and win increased workplace safety standards, encourage frontline essential workers to be fully vaccinated, advocate for the passage of innovative laws - SB4 (first and only in the nation COVID worker safety law) and SB386 (Right to Return), turn out Culinary Union members to vote in a historic 2020 presidential election, and comprehensively support working families every step of the way during the global crisis.
Diana is passionate about continuing to mentor and develop leaders so that workers can organize and win a better standard of living for their families.
Diana holds the following leadership positions: President of UNI Americas Gaming Division, Executive Committee Member of the Nevada State AFL-CIO, Vice-President of UNITE HERE International Union, Trustee of the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas, and member of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority Board.