Billionaire investor Carl Icahn says he will keep Trump
Taj Mahal open if Local 54 drops a court appeal over worker benefits.
“It’s real simple. If they pull the appeal, we’ll keep
the place open without state aid,” Icahn, who is the casino's main lender and
de facto owner, said Wednesday.
The announcement came about an hour before hundreds of
union supporters marched down the Atlantic City Boardwalk in frigid weather to
decry the billionaire as a mercenary union-buster, while at the same time
calling on him to save the Taj.
The casino is expected to close on or around Dec. 12,
taking about 2,700 jobs with it.
Its bankrupt parent, Trump Entertainment Resorts, had
been lobbying for state aid as part of a multipronged plan to rescue the
flailing Boardwalk property.
The company won approval from a federal judge in October
to cancel its labor contract with the union, effectively giving Trump
Entertainment the go-ahead to swap union pensions for 401(k) plans and end
payments to a union health fund. Under the new arrangement, which the company says
could save $14.6 million annually, workers would obtain insurance through the
Affordable Care Act.
The union appealed the ruling, which is at the heart of
the bitter dispute that spilled onto the Boardwalk Wednesday night.
Asked at the march why the union is bent on pursuing the
appeal, Local 54 President Bob McDevitt said: “Because the only thing that the
bankruptcy judge left us with was our constitutional right to appeal.”
Icahn, who controls the first-lien debt secured by the
Taj, said Trump Entertainment is losing $10 million a month. He said he'll
invest heavily in the property, but “the company simply can't be in limbo for
three months while the appeal is pending.”
Chris Lamorte, of Roselle, Union County, said he came to
the Boardwalk on Wednesday in an effort to stop benefit cuts at the Taj from
spreading to other properties, a concern McDevitt has also expressed.
“If it starts at one hotel, it can go to other hotels,”
said Lamorte, a massage therapist at a Hilton in Short Hills, Essex County, and
a member of Local 6 of the New York Hotel Trades Council. “We don’t want to let
what’s happening here go to other places.”
Source: Press
of Atlantic City
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