Union, casinos reach tentative agreement to end AC strike

By Liz Benston (contact)

Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004 | 10:55 a.m.

The longest strike in Atlantic City casino history was temporarily halted Monday night as members of Local 54 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union reached a tentative agreement with management.

The monthlong strike, during which managers made beds, cleaned bathrooms and served food and drinks to customers, involved some 10,000 union members and seven of Atlantic City's 12 casinos. The five-year contract includes increased wages and improved benefits but isn't the three-year contract the union had sought.

Union members are set to vote on the offer Wednesday and, if approved, could return to work Thursday.

The agreement calls for all strikers -- even those who Local 54 leaders allege were let go by the casinos for union activities -- to return to work Thursday. Workers hired to replace any strikers will be let go so union members can return to their jobs, said D. Taylor, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union in Las Vegas and executive vice president of gaming for UNITE HERE, the parent union for the Culinary and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union in Atlantic City.

In return, the union intends to drop multiple complaints filed with the National Labor Relations Board last week against the four casino companies. The complaints cited more than 200 incidents of alleged harassment and intimidation of strikers by executives, managers and nonunion workers still on the job. The union also will drop a planned trip today to the United Kingdom to warn unions there about the labor dispute. That country is on the cusp of welcoming U.S. casino companies to develop Las Vegas-style casinos.

"Our members have achieved the best contract in the history of Local 54 and in the history of the gaming industry," union President Bob McDevitt said in a statement. "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."

Early on the union identified the three-year contract as one of its most important goals because it would have put the Atlantic City and Las Vegas locals on the same negotiation cycle, allowing them to negotiate as a bloc and, during labor disputes, threaten to shut down both gaming centers.

Taylor downplayed the significance of failing to get the three-year contract, saying the union has become stronger than ever over the past month.

"Finally we've become a national gaming union with different branches in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Detroit and the Midwest," he said. "We have started functioning as one and that's going to be needed."

The strike was effective because the casinos' service and revenue suffered as a result, Taylor said.

"Our union is very capable of having a citywide strike and of having a very successful citywide strike," he said. "Going forward, if you don't have that as one of your many weapons you have less power."

The symbiotic relationship between the casino industry and one of the country's largest unions is still fragile, Taylor said.

"I think that in this very long and difficult and brutish struggle, it will take time and some work in order to (restore) the relationship we had before the strike," he said.

Harrah's Entertainment Inc. spokesman Gary Thompson said the company -- which owns the Harrah's and Showboat properties in Atlantic City -- is "optimistic" about the tentative agreement.

"We hope union members will approve the vote tomorrow so people can return to work and we can get back to business as usual," he said.

Thompson said the company intends to offer other jobs to all of the permanent replacement workers who were hired during the strike.

Other casino representatives with Caesars Entertainment Inc., Colony Capital and Aztar Corp. could not be reached for comment or declined to comment on the agreement. None of the four struck casino companies released any estimates of how much the sweetened contract would cost.

Nancy Schromsky, a cocktail server, said that the monthlong strike had taken a toll on workers. Striking workers, who can earn between $500 and $700 a week in wages and tips, received only $200 a week from the union, although three weeks into the strike the union raised that to $300.

"I think some members were hurting," Schromsky, who is also a member of the contract committee, said. "But you sacrifice in life and that's what we did. I thought that staying out a month was worth it."

The five-year contract includes:

The tentative agreement was ratified Monday by 93 percent of Local 54's negotiating committee.