Culinary leader Conley Mallia dies

Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2003 | 9:42 a.m.

The welfare of Las Vegas' working men and women was the primary concern of Marge Conley Mallia.

A longtime executive board member of Culinary Local 226, she survived political intrigue, including the 1977 slaying of leader Al Bramlet and the rise and fall of his controversial successor Ben Schmoutey, to enjoy many prosperous years under the leadership of her longtime friend and co-worker Jim Arnold.

Conley Mallia picketed during the prolonged and costly strikes of 1976 and '84 and was arrested several times for acts of civil disobedience in her battle to improve conditions and wages.

As a member of the Nevada Dairy Commission in the 1970s, she was a driving force in getting the expiration date stamped on milk cartons.

Conley Mallia, who as a Caesars Palace waitress was handpicked by late entertainment legend Jimmy Durante to serve him, died Thursday from kidney failure at her Las Vegas home. She was 74 and a Las Vegas resident of 53 years.

Friends this week are remembering Conley Mallia, the first woman to serve on the Culinary Executive Board, as an extraordinary force in the union's success.

"Today's workers enjoy good health care, meals in the helps hall, a decent wage and good working conditions that Marge sacrificed for," said Arnold, the union's former secretary-treasurer who today is administrative assistant to the president of the International Hotel Workers Union.

"Whenever there was a fight for culinary workers' rights, Marge was there."

Mallia survived the most turbulent times in the union's history. She was hired as a union business agent by Bramlet in the early 1970s. She remained in that post after Bramlet was murdered, allegedly by underworld figures.

Born Marge Ann Conley on Nov. 12, 1928, in Chicago, she was the younger of two children of Clifford Conley, a member of the city's powerful Democratic political machine, and the former Martha Grasso.

Conley got her start as a waitress at age 17 in Chicago where she joined the union in 1945. Five years later, she came to Las Vegas and was on the work force that opened the old Desert Inn in 1950.

In 1952, Marge was made an officer of the Culinary Executive Board and served in that post until 1970.

She was long involved in Nevada Democratic politics and appeared in television ads for the campaigns of late Sen. Howard Cannon.

A confirmed bachelorette for most of her life, Conley married automotive consultant Joe Mallia in 1995. Joe died in 1998.

At her Culinary Union retirement party in 2000, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman presented Conley Mallia the key to the city.

She leaves no survivors.