The Atlantic City Boardwalk used to be a tremendous showpiece for the city. The coming of casino resorts designed as insular, all-in-one destinations has translated into a steady decline for the boards. Now, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority has a plan for its renewal.
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AC facelift
Surveillance under watch
If you read my bio, you know that I used to work in casino surveillance, so new stories about it are always favorites of mine. I’d read about this “incident” from Caesars before, but it’s back in the news again.
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A must for Atlantic City
I’ve said it for years…legal sports betting is essential towards Atlantic City cementing its place as the casino capital of the East. Now, it looks like it has a shot of happening.
Strike is over!
The rancorous monthlong strike that pitted Local 54 against7 Atlantic City casinos is over. Given that the new contract is five years, rather than the three wanted by the union, I’d say this was a victory for the casinos, though of course everyone lost with the disruption of the strike. From CBS via AP:
The union representing about 10,000 striking bartenders, cocktail servers, housekeepers and other service employees approved the five-year deal late Monday. It calls for significant gains in wages and benefits and guards against the casinos’ practice of leasing space to non-union restaurants and bars.
“Given our starting point, we had thought we needed a three-year contract to reach those goals, but we achieved all that and more during the course of this strike,” said Robert McDevitt, president of Local 54 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union.
A vote by rank-and-file members was planned for Wednesday. Workers could be back on the job as early as Thursday, according to union officials.
The union went on strike Oct. 1 against seven of the city’s 12 casinos, turning operations in the 24-hour gambling halls upside down. While revenue figures for the month � quantifying the amount of lost business � have yet to be released, the strike was clearly bad for business.
About 10,000 casino workers � not including dealers � walked out at Harrah’s Atlantic City, Showboat Casino-Hotel, Resorts Atlantic City, Bally’s Atlantic City, Caesars Atlantic City, Tropicana Casino and Resort and the Atlantic City Hilton.
The main sticking point was the length of the contract. Union officials wanted a three-year deal whose expiration would coincide with contracts of sister unions in Las Vegas, Chicago and elsewhere.Casino officials objected, fearing coinciding contract expirations would give the unions the power to shut down casinos in Atlantic City, Las Vegas and other jurisdictions.
Under the agreement, the union said, members would get:
A 28.3 percent increase in the total “economic package” over five years, which includes boosts in wages and pension contributions.Continuation of fully funded health care, sparing union members from having to contribute to their insurance through payroll deductions.
Protection of members and their union when a casino changes ownership.
N.J. Casino Workers Reach Deal | November 2, 2004�13:26:14
Hopefully, everyone can get back to work now, and there will be some peace and quiet around the hospital, which is adjacent to struck property Bally’s. Also, when I make my tour of AC casinos to snap picture of casino carpet, I’m not going to have to cross picket lines.
Striking distance
I haven’t said much about the Local 54 strike in Atlantic City here, mostly because I’ve been giving you fun stories about hard-up Swedes and gambling Neopets. Today, I read a great article in the Philly Inquirer:
It’s a good thing Borgata bosses inked a contract with casino workers last year.If they hadn’t, those young, bronzed Borgata Babes would be strutting the strike lines, clicking their high heels and drawing attention to their D cups instead of employees’ demands.
Thankfully for the strikers, the first thing drivers into Atlantic City saw this week was the real face of the state’s casino industry:
Three 40-something single moms dodging traffic with cigarette in mouth, wondering how soon their cars will be repossessed and how much longer they’ll be able to afford their antidepressants.
The strike – the longest in the casino city’s history – will mark its two-week birthday tomorrow with 10,000 bartenders, cooks, waitresses and maids picketing on payday.
Among the trio of Caesars cocktail waitresses, there’s little to celebrate.
Maria Campbell has already missed one month’s $900 rent on the three-bedroom house in Somers Point she shares with her two sons.
Bonnie Adams had to skip a payment on the SUV she bought last year. She figures she is just days away from losing her Hyundai Santa Fe.
And Kirsten Olson can’t decide whether to laugh or cry at the casinos’ allegation that the strike is nothing more than a ploy to join forces with Las Vegas unions to plot an industry-crippling strike three years from now.
Striking, she notes while inhaling bus fumes, really isn’t much fun.
“We’re all on antidepressants,” Adams says.
And if the strike drags on much longer, they won’t have the money to pay for a refill.
Leave it to a trio of cocktail servers schooled in the art of the honest hustle to stake out a prime picketing spot sure to rattle superstitious gamblers.
Good stuff. The AC Press, though, is definitely the newspaper of record for the strike. Here’s a story about an impending traffic disruption/labor rally:
Striking casino workers will take their protest back to the streets this weekend in what promises to be a massive rally, even larger than a Boardwalk march last month that drew thousands of people.Local 54 of Unite Here, which represents 10,000 striking workers at seven casino hotels, plans to stage a march down Pacific Avenue on Saturday, threatening to snarl traffic on the city’s main thoroughfare. The Local 54 Web site reported Wednesday that the march will feature hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean.
“It’s definitely going to disrupt traffic,” police Lt. Michael Tullio said. “If they have 7,000 or 8,000 marchers going down Pacific Avenue … it’s going to disrupt traffic flow in the entire city.”
Local 54 President Bob McDevitt said the rally is expected to attract more protesters than the 7,000 union supporters who marched on the Boardwalk on Sept. 16, then the largest labor demonstration in the city’s history.
“A lot of people are coming in from out of town. They’re coming from all over the East Coast,” McDevitt said, adding that labor unions affiliated with Unite Here plan to send scores of supporters.
According to Local 54′s Web site, the march is scheduled to begin at noon at the Showboat Casino-Hotel at New Jersey Avenue and make its way south along Pacific Avenue, past other casinos that are the target of the 13-day-old strike.
The march will end about 90 minutes later in front of the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort on Boston Avenue, about two miles from the Showboat.
I’ve heard that the picketers in front of Bally’s have been particularly loud. That might not mean much to you, unless you were a paying guest at Bally’s (they apparently start making noise around 4:30 AM), but think for a second on the well-being of patients in Atlantic City Medical Center, which is right across Pacific Avenue.
Thanks to the strike, patients in ACMC have to be subjected to an endless barrage of chanting, horn-blowing, and other auditory assaults. That includes, of course, the trauma patients, some of whom are recovering from serious automobile accidents. Imagine how it must feel, after being involved in a serious car accident, to lie in your hospital bed and hear, for hours on end, blaring car horns. It’s probably not conducive to putting the trauma behind you.
I’m all for the right to free speech, but as a humanitarian effort, Local 54 might want to institute a “relatively” quiet zone in the immediate area of the hospital.
And that’s all I have to say about the strike…for now.
Striking in AC
With the union and casino management unable to reach a labor accord, casino workers in Atlantic City have gone on strike. From, of all places, the Toronto Star:
Front-office executives served drinks, lawyers flipped hamburgers and accountants made beds today after about 10,000 union workers went on strike at seven of Atlantic City’s casinos.
Cocktail waitresses, housekeepers, bellhops and other members of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees union walked off the job and hit the picket lines around daybreak, some in the middle of their shifts.
Dealers and others holding gambling-related jobs were not part of the dispute, and the 24-hour casinos remained open, although service was curtailed at some.
The striking workers have been without a contract since their five-year deal expired Sept. 15. They are demanding a three-year contract, protection against the use of non-union restaurant workers, and casino-funded health care.
At the Tropicana Casino and Resort, room service was cancelled, while several casinos closed restaurants because they had no one to work in them.
Timothy Wilmott, the $1.2-million-a-year chief operating officer of Harrah’s Entertainment, was pressed into duty serving water to customers at Harrah’s Atlantic City.
Harrah’s planned to fly in 300 people from Chicago and Las Vegas this weekend to spell its tired replacement workers.
Atlantic City has 12 casinos. The strike hit Bally’s Atlantic City, Caesars Atlantic City, Harrah’s Atlantic City, Showboat Hotel-Casino, the Atlantic City Hilton, Resorts Atlantic City and the Tropicana Casino and Resort.
TheStar.com – Hotel, casino workers strike in Atlantic City
Let’s hope this gets settled soon.
Them’s fighting words!
Labor/management negotiations can frequently get contentious. But this open letter from Dennis Gomes and Pam Popielarski of the Tropicana to Local 54 seems downright belligerent:
There is no need to wait until September 30 for Local 54 and the Tropicana to settle this contract.We challenge you to sit down at the bargaining table with the Tropicana to reach an agreement right now for the benefit of Tropicana’s employees and the Tropicana. We are ready to meet and to bargain around the clock.
For some reason, the tone of the first sentence seems like something you would hear a) before a bar fight or b) on professional wrestling. Seriously, this is an old school cheap heat tactic: the “good guy” challenges the “bad guy” to fight it out right now, but the “bad guy” refuses, making the fans wait until the pay-per-view.
I imagine Gomes sitting next to McDevitt at, say, Tony’s Baltimore Grill (right up the street from the Trop; with the expansion, they’re next-door neighbors). After the two exchange, “what’re you looking at” and “you think you’re better than me,” Gomes gets up, says, “To hell with this. I’m not waiting until September 30th. I’ll be outside if you want to start negotiating wage and benefit packages right now!”
Seriously, I hope for the benefit of casino employees that both sides can sit down and get a deal hammered out before a strike happens. I can’t recall any successful bargaining session ever taking place through the media via open letters, but there’s always a first time.
News from Mississippi, Virginia, Atlantic City
Here are three newsworthy items that, on a slow news day, would merit a post of their own. But, since there’s no crying in online discussion of gaming, I’ve combined them into one.
Item: Mississippi Gulf Coast casinos were spared the worst from Hurricane Ivan, and will reopen today:
Coast casinos to reopen today following storm
If you want to help the victims of this natural disaster, donate to the Red Cross.
Item: Virginia legislator pushing to legalize card games in private clubs. This is a follow up a a previous post about police being busted for hosting a poker tournament. House minority whip Chap Petersen wants to make card games unambiguously legal in such circumstances:
�Virginia law is dealing a lousy hand to poker players who want to gather with their friends and enjoy a game,� Petersen said. The Virginia Beach tournament, organized by a city police officer, had attracted as many as 150 participants and featured a $4,500 pot. Before it was shut down, it had been held at the FOP headquarters on Birdneck Road about once a month on Sundays since December.Petersen said that poker is not outlawed by state statute and that Virginia law allows four exemptions to its prohibition on gambling: bingo games and raffles held by charitable organizations, off-track pari-mutuel betting, gambling held in private residences and the state lottery.
Legislator wants to legalize card-game gambling at private clubs
Nothing, it seems, will stand in the way of poker’s expansion. Why aren’t the presidential candidates asked for their positions on this issue? And why not settle the election by a no limit Hold em game?
Item: Labor demonstration on Atlantic City Boardwalk. From AP:
Waving signs that read “No Contract, No Peace” and “Contract Now,” an estimated 5,000 casino-hotel workers Thursday marched along the Boardwalk and onto the beach in a boisterous show of union solidarity. There were no arrests or reports of violence, police said.
It seems a remarkable coincidence that the Local 54 contract expires just before the Miss America Pageant, when national attention is focused on Atlantic City. Whoever thought that one up is a genius. Hopefully, all this will be settled without a strike.
