Atlantic City Casino Union Authorizes Strike, July 4 Walkout Threatens Busy Season

Members of the Atlantic Ocean City casino labor union Unite Here Local 54 make authorised their leaders to call a excise at any clip after July 1 unless unexampled toil agreements are reached with the IX resorts.

The collective bargaining agreements that dictate minimum pay and an regalia of workings conditions for some 10,000 hospitality serving workers employed past the Atlantic City casinos expired June 1. Unite Here Local 54 officials are negotiating young terms with casino reps, but the two sides are seemingly far from signing young contracts.

Unite Here said almost 96% of the “several thousand” unification members who voted yesterday during the scratch empowerment lent their backup to such a protest.

The manufacture meliorate non have this lightly,” warned Bob McDevitt, president of the Local 54 chapter. “This is a no B.S. thing.”

Union leaders are readying their armory of negotiating weapons by asking members to authorize a strike. The commendation could give the brotherhood the upper helping hand in the deliberations o'er the next II weeks, as the resorts would hurt greatly should their bartenders, cooks, waitstaff, housekeepers, bellmen, and porters paseo off the chore during the long July 4 Independence Clarence Day weekend.

THE VOTES ARE IN: Thousands of casino workers mold ballots today and 96% have voted inwards favor of authorizing the worker negotiation committee to call up a expunge if an agreement is not reached with Caesars, Harrah’s, Tropicana, and Borgata, past July 1st and Hard Rock past July 3rd! pic.twitter.com/OZrLsgHeuO

— UNITE HERE Local 54 (@UHLocal54) June 15, 2022

Casinos Keep Quiet

The Atlantic Ocean City gambling casino conjugation is seeking make up increases for its members that testament improve allow the absolute majority of workers to maintain middle-class lifestyles. The brotherhood has inward recent undertake negotiations to a greater extent focused on wellness and retirement benefits, as well as worker safety, than unmediated take-home pay.

But with inflation soaring and Americans intuitive feeling the painfulness at the gas pump, Unite Here says its members deserve a “significant” raise. What sorting of percentage step-up that entails isn’t exactly clear.

The casinos’ agency inwards the bargaining has so far opted to refrain from speech production in public nigh the discussions and what the manufacture seeks through the young agreements.

Ruth Ann Joyce, a longtime Atlantic City barkeeper who has worked at Harrah’s and Hard Rock, says the depression pay currently being offered by the casinos is resulting inward frame staffing.

Historically, our fights inward general have dealt with wellness care. This go-round, it’s about economics. We can’t happen workers because there’s no money, and it’s concentrated to sustain onto the workers we ut have got because they tin can proceed someplace else and pee more,” James Augustine Aloysius Joyce told the Associated Press.

Representatives from MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment are representing the niner casinos. The deuce companies master the Atlantic Ocean City gaming market. Of the $2.55 1000000000 the brick-and-mortar casinos won last year, MGM and Caesars properties accounted for $1.36 one million million of the revenue — or nearly 53%.

Hard Rock, which has get the second-richest gambling casino inwards town in arrears MGM’s Borgata, also has a considerable front inward the unification negotiations.

Ocean, Bally’s Exempt

Ocean Casino Resort and Bally’s will not live targeted for a strike, McDevitt said. The uniting brag explained that those deuce Boardwalk properties make ongoing agreements with Unite Here locution they testament bind to whatever collective bargaining agreement MGM/Caesars reaches with the swop group.

Since those deuce casinos are not straight mired inwards the bargaining process, McDevitt says they testament follow spared from a protest. Golden Nugget and Resorts also largely come after the wad but fare have got a vocalise in the discussions.

“Bally’s and Ocean are in the putting surface zone. Resorts and Golden Nugget are inward the xanthous zone. The sleep are in the scarlet zone,” McDevitt said of where a walk out mightiness occur.