Icahn, union spar in Taj fight flare-ups

Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort will close if its main union wins a federal appeal aimed at restoring worker benefits, Wall Street investor Carl Icahn said Friday, a day after the National Labor Relations Board backed the union.

Icahn, the bankrupt casino’s main lender and de facto owner, did not return a call for comment Friday. But in an open letter to union workers who protested outside his New York City office on Thursday, he said union leaders “do not seem to care that if they win the appeal it will only mean the loss of the very jobs they are supposed to protect.”

The National Labor Relations Board backed the union, Local 54 of UNITE-HERE, in a brief filed with the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday, calling on the court to reverse an October ruling that gave the casino the go-ahead to stop paying into union health and pension funds.

In the filing, the federal agency said that ruling "displaces the Board’s primary authority" to handle the dispute under the National Labor Relations Act.

Trump Entertainment Resorts, Taj’s bankrupt parent, won approval from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross in October to make sweeping benefit changes for about 1,100 Local 54 workers at Taj, telling Gross that the changes will save the company $14.6 million annually.

Local 54 president Bob McDevitt said Friday that Icahn, who owns Tropicana Casino and Resort, is a union-busting mercenary who has stripped Taj employees of the very benefits that make casino jobs worth working.

“They took away a paid meal break. They took their health care. They took their pension,” he said. Now, working at Taj is “like McDonald’s,” he said.

But McDevitt said he is confident that the union will prevail in the Third Circuit.

“When the federal government intervenes with an amicus curiae brief on your behalf, that’s a very powerful statement,” he said Friday, using the Latin term for “friend of the court,” the type of advisory brief submitted by the NLRB.

He declined to discuss whether future protests or a full-on strike at Taj, which employs about 2,400, are in the offing. “We’re focused on Mr. Icahn’s businesses. Not just in Atlantic City, but everywhere,” he said.

Source: Press of Atlantic City