IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN THAT....

I spend a lot of time down in Atlantic City at the casinos (I was suposed to be there this weekend...but, picket lines mean don't cross, so I had to cancel my reservation at the Tropicana)

Just to break it down for you, most of the customers in the AC casinos are New Yorkers, and, since most of us don't own cars, we take busses from here down there (some leave from Port Authority, others leave from working class neighborhoods, and, in either case, they drive right into the private bus terminals at 11 of the 12 casions...the newly built "Las Vegas-style" Borgata's too high class for the working class "bus patrons" so they don't have a bus terminal in their house...their more affluent patrons come in their own private cars)

A lot of folks from Newark, Jersey City, Westchester, Long Island, Philadelphia, the Philly suburbs, Wilmington, Baltimore and DC also come in on busses as well....

The bus routes into AC are the busiest interurban bus routes IN THE WORLD...they carry several MILLION patrons a year into the casinos...

And, since AC is an island, there are only 3 ways in for heavy vehicles like busses and trucks..the AC Expressway Bridge, the Albany Av Bridge on Black Horse Pike, and the Absecon Blvd Bridge...

Also, a lot of the bus drivers are union..Greyhound is the second largest carrier going into the city, and, of course, their drivers are members of the Amalgamated Transit Union....

The biggest carrier, Academy Bus Lines, is a scab company...but, a lot of their part time drivers from New York are moonlighting MTA New York City Transit bus drivers, who are members of Transport Workers Union Local 100....

The rest of the carriers are all scab, Coach USA, and a bunch of independents (some of which are owned by gangsters from Chinatown...they're the cheapest busses to take, but your taking your life in your hands....sometimes thugs from rival companies will attack the busses at their pick up/drop off point in Chatham Square..and make the passengers board rival busses)

The non union drivers get paid chump change...Academy pays it's drivers a flat $ 75 bucks a trip for the NYC-AC round trip [an approximately 2 to 3 hour drive each way, depending on traffic]...the independents pay even less....

As for the deliveries...pretty much everything that goes into the casinos goes in union...the liquor, the sodas, the beer, the meat, the fresh seafood, the vegtables, the fruit, the canned goods, the laundry and above all, the cold cash money (it's an all cash business..and there's a LOT of paper money and coinage that goes in and out of those houses..they use little tractors pulling little 4 wheeled metal trailers to haul the money around the casinos early in the morning...)

Almost all of those drivers are Teamsters...some from out of Philly or South Jersey, some from North Jersey, and even some from New York City...

If you stopped the busses and delivery trucks, forgetaboutit....those casinos would come to a screeching halt with a quickness....

But, that's not gonna happen...since UNITE HERE local 54 can't even stop the casinos....

5 of the houses are still running...Mr Trump's 3 properties, plus the Borgata and Resorts Int'l....they all have special deals with the union....since Trump Marina and the Borgata are open, the whole West Side of AC is open for business as usual, only the boardwalk properties are affected..and even there, Trump Plaza, Trump Taj Mahal and Resorts are running...

And, at the other 7 houses...a huge chunk of the workers are still on the job....

The table game dealers (the folks who run the live gaming at the tables - poker, craps, roulette, blackjack ect) and the bookepers are all non union - thanks to a deal that the then-mobbed up HERE made with gangster Ben Siegel out in Las Vegas back in 1947...they agreed that the union would not represent anybody who handled money in a casino, so Siegel and his "associates" could "discipline" them as they saw fit....

In those days, "labor discipline" in Las Vegas often involved a .45 caliber slug to the head...and that's actually how Ben Siegel left this Earth shortly after making that arraingment with the HERE, since his bosses felt he wasn't adequately running Vegas for them....

These day's it's not quite so brutal...bookeepers get fired instead of murdered, table game dealers get docked and suspended rather than having their hands broken....but, these workers are still subject to the whims of management, with no union protection...since HERE kept it's promise to Ben Siegel, and, from that day to this, has refused to organize any casino worker who handles money...

The only workers who handle money in AC who are union are the slot machine attendants...they were organized by the Teamsters..and, whey they struck Caesar's Atlantic City in the summer of 2001, local 54 scabbed on them and kept working behind their picketline....

This year, the slot machine attendants returned the favor, and they're scabbing on local 54....

They, and the non union managers, table game dealers, bookeepers and office workers are, after they finish their regular shifts, do a second shift as cooks, buspeople, waitpeople, bartenders, bar backs, cocktail servers, housekeepers, porters, laundry workers, room service workers, concierges, bellmen/women, valet parkers, bus greeters and the other service jobs that are normally done by local 54 members....

Also, Park Place Entertainment, the Nevada-based owner of the 7 struck casinos, has flown in scabs from Las Vegas and other cities around the world as reinforcements....

 From what I understand, you can't get room service and your room will not be cleaned, but the food is still being prepared, although only in the buffets...the sit down restaurant workers have been sent in to keep the buffets open...(a lot of them are non union too...local 54 let that work go to scab subcontractors in the last contract 4 years ago)

They're not the only union scabs...there are union carpenters, electricians, painters and operating engineers who are maintenance workers in the casinos...to my knowledge, they're still working....although building trades carpenters, ironworkers, laborers and other trades working on casino renovations at the Tropicana and other properties are respecting the line....

Also, there are union actors, musicians, stagehands and teamsters are involved in the live entertainment at the casinos....and, so far as I know, they are still scabbing.....

And, above all...the slot machines are still buzzing, the poker rooms are open, the race books are running, and, above all, the table games are available 24/7......that's where the money comes from, several billion dollars a year's worth...and the strike has totally not disrupted those operations....no matter how much silly bullshit they do with people dressed in costumes doing stage manged "arrests" out on the Expressway dressed like Gandhi....

That Gandhi stuff is offensive on another level...a racial one....

Local 54 is White-led, and always has been...but, AC itself is a largely South Asian Muslim town....most of the South Side of the city is Pakistani, Bengali or Muslim Indian....a lot of the city's African Americans are Muslim as well....and MOST of them work in and around the casinos....

Since Gandhi's Hindu nationalism partitioned their homeland, and led to the slaughter of 2 million Indian Muslims back in 1947, it's kinda offensive for White union officials to throw that in their faces, in their town, in their union....it's insensitivity at the highest level...

In any event, the 10,000+ UNITE HERE local 54 service workers are getting screwed...and they have really horrible leadership, who are pushing them down the path to defeat.....

FRATERNALLY,
GREGORY A. BUTLER, LOCAL 608 CARPENTER,
FOR GANGBOX: CONSTRUCTION WORKERS NEWS SERVICE,