For banquet server: Picket duty, sleeping in now the new routine

John Curran

Monday, Oct. 11, 2004 | 9:13 a.m.

ATLANTIC CITY -- Carla Corr got lucky. She got to sleep in for a change. It was 6:30 a.m. before she rolled out of bed, 2 1/2 hours later than usual.

As a banquet server at Tropicana Casino and Resort, her days normally start with a 4 a.m. wake-up. By 5 a.m., she is on the job.

But on Wednesday, there was no job to go to. On strike along with about 10,000 other casino-hotel service workers, Corr slept late, starting her day by walking her dogs down to the bay near her Absecon home.

The dogs -- Talon, a 5-year-old Labrador-pit bull mix, and Kadoe, a 2-year-old Akita -- were confused because they normally get walked in the afternoon, when Corr gets home.

For Corr, the strike means late wake-ups, early dog walks and picket line duty. It also means a financial hit. October is one of Atlantic City's busiest months when it comes to conventions -- she makes up to $10,000 in that month alone -- and Corr is missing out.

"Right now, I'm enjoying this," said Corr, 43, a single mother of a grown son. "It hasn't changed my life, it's enhanced it. But there's a shadow that's over all of it and that shadow is uncertainty."

But when she gets to Tropicana at 7:45 a.m. for the start of her four-hour picket line shift, she is all sunshine.

A strike captain, she wears sweat pants, sneakers and a white union T-shirt with "Contract Committee" on the back, over a maroon sweat shirt.

She moves from place to place on Tropicana's perimeter, positioning the sign-wielding pickets where they won't violate court-ordered restrictions.

She keeps a watchful eye on videocamera-toting casino security guards hired to watch picket lines, then reminds one of her pickets to stay out of the street, lest he be captured on videotape.

"You're on camera!" she tells him. "They're going to show this in court!"

The man steps back onto the sidewalk. "Thank you," Corr calls out, her voice raised over the din of honking horns.

Robert Davis, a bullhorn-carrying union striker, walks by on Pacific Avenue, chanting "No contract." She yells back, "No peace!" It is the mantra of the strike line.

Moments later, she walks up Morris Avenue to the Boardwalk side of the casino to rustle up a few more strikers to bring back to the Pacific Avenue side of the building.

The union members must do four hours of picketing a day to qualify for $200 a week in strike pay. They would rather be on the Boardwalk, where it's sunny and there's a view, instead of on Pacific Avenue, where it's cool, shady and noisy, with jitney buses and cars zooming past, their drivers honking in support of strikers.

At noon, her shift ends. But before she goes home, she "buzzes" the city, driving past the other casino hotels to honk and wave at fellow strikers.

Once home, she plays with the dogs, drives out to visit her mother's grave and takes her 19-year-old son -- a cook apprentice at the Atlantic City Hilton who's also on strike -- to the mall, where she buys paint sticks to use as noisemakers on the picket line.

For now, she has money. But the strike pay can't fully replace her regular paychecks, which last year amounted to $63,000. That's the part she worries about.

"I can't ignore the fact that three, four, five weeks down the line, I might have to do something. I might end up delivering newspapers. I'm used to getting up early. That could be a decent gig."