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Melodee Megia, a former employee at The Cosmopolitan Resort and Casino in Las Vegas,

claims she was told she was fired from her job for saying “bye bye” on the telephone instead

of “goodbye” while eight-months pregnant.  She has filed a lawsuit against the hotel for preg-

nancy discrimination and a class-action suit for workers’ wages, saying employees were not

paid for the time they had to wait for and change into their uniforms on a daily basis.  Megia

worked at the hotel from November 2010 until September 2011, when she said she was fired

“based on her pregnancy,” according to court papers filed with the Clark County District

Court in Nevada last week.  Megia was a “room service sales” employee answering the tele-

phone when hotel guests called for room service, occasionally assisting in room delivery,

her lawyers said.  She is represented by Mark Thierman and Jason Kuller, labor attorneys.

Thierman said “she was denigrated verbally and was mistreated because of her pregnancy,”

while having a “behind-the-scenes” job at the hotel. Amy Rossetti, public relations director

of The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, said in a statement, “As a matter of company policy, we

do not comment on pending litigation.”  The Cosmopolitan hotel is a modern and posh

hotel rated four stars by TripAdvisor.com that opened its doors in December 2010.  “It’s

tough working in Vegas, which tries to be glamorous,” Thierman said.  In March 2011, accord-

ing to the lawsuit, Megia was asked to deliver a “pleasure packet” of condoms to a hotel cus-

tomer, when Megia’s supervisor said, “Isn’t it too late for that? You should have thought

about it before getting knocked up.”  “From that point forward, the director of room service

frequently gave [Megia] dirty looks or shook his head disapprovingly,” the suit said.  One day,

the suit added, he commented, “‘So when are you having that?’ in reference to [Megia's] preg-

nant stomach,” and on another occasion, he told another co-worker as Megia began her shift,

“That is what happens when you have sex.”  On Sept. 16, 2011, when she was eight months

pregnant, the “stated reason for [her] termination was that she said ‘bye bye’ instead of ‘good

bye’ on the telephone to a room service customer,” according to the suit.  “In fact, this was

merely a pretext as [Megia] had been subject to harassing conduct and other pretextual dis-

cipline leading up to her termination since the time her pregnancy was learned by [the

hotel],” the suit added.  In the same filing to sue the hotel for unspecified damages for preg-

nancy discrimination, Megia also made class-action allegations for unpaid wages on behalf

of the hotel’s employees.  “Nevada is a very tough state for service employees. It’s the Wild

West. Coming from California originally, it was shocking for me,” Thierman said. “Many, if

not most, people here work on minimum wage plus tips. Some of the abuses are pretty flag-

rant.”  In the Cosmopolitan hotel’s case, employees were not permitted to wear their uni-

forms outside work and had to pick up and drop off their uniforms before and after their

shifts, often leading to additional overtime for which they were not paid, the suit claimed.

The suit said employees also had to change into their uniforms on-site in an area away

from where they clocked in and out for the day. The hotel also “maintained timekeeping

policies that always rounded work hours in favor of the [hotel],” the suit said.  The Cosmo-

politan maintained a rounding policy to the nearest 15 minutes, but Megia and other em-

ployees were “prohibited” from “clocking in more than seven minutes early or more than

a minute late,” the filing said, and employees were prohibited from “clocking out less

than a minute early or more than seven minutes late.” “Service workers are not protected,”

Thierman said. “Nevada has a misconception that ‘right to work’ means ‘right to abuse,’

when it really means workers don’t have to join a union.”  “These are true blue collar

workers whom labor laws were designed to protect,” he said. “These were workers who

worked physically hard as opposed to working at a desk. I think they deserve as much pro-

tection as they can get.”

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