Every day, craft workers with sun-baked faces and calloused hands ready themselves for another shift of construction on the Las Vegas Strip, trading jokes before toting their plastic coolers onto the site. The favorite uniform is a short-sleeved cotton T-shirt suited to the 100°-plus temperatures.

The workers face hazards even more dangerous than the sun, and over the past two years, 13 never made it home. One was Dustin “Doobie” Tarter, 39, who was crushed by a crane counterweight system at the CityCenter project on May 31. An affable, fun-loving man, Tarter’s death unlocked pent-up resentment over the accidents, and 100 union workers began picketing CityCenter and the nearby Cosmopolitan jobsites and chanting, “No more death.”