SugarHouse accused of spying on union supporters with surveillance cameras

The management at SugarHouse Casino is being accused of using its surveillance cameras to spy on union supporters.

The Unite Here Local 54 union has filed documentation with the National Labor Relations Board making the following charge:

Beginning on or around August 2011 until on or around August 2014, the above-named Employer, by and through its agents, violated the Act by instructing its security officers to engage in surveillance of Union committee persons while they were working and while they were not working. The security officers did in fact engage in such surveillance.

The casino denies the charge.

A small but vocal group is trying to start a union at the 4-year-old casino. They recently launched a billboard advertising campaign with the headline: "We work hard, we deserve better."

The effort is led by Dermot Delude-Dix, a 28-year-old who wears a union button on his shirt while he works and has been outspoken critic of the casino's management. He says management has been watching him with surveillance cameras.

"I feel as though I'm under extra scrutiny," Delude-Dix said. "People in the surveillance department — whose job is to detect criminal activity — were consistently being asked to pay special attention to union supporters and make lists of who they are talking to."

Delude-Dix even said he spoke with a surveillance department worker who said he was ordered to take notes with pens and notepads rather than on the computer — presumably not to leave a digital trail.

Wendy Hamilton, general manager at SugarHouse, denied the accusation.

"We are not in the business of watching anyone on surveillance aside from people handling money," she said. "We are not a group of nefarious managers. ... It's ludicrous to think we are skulking around and watching the people who want the union. When it's a majority, they'll vote it in."

NLRB filing by Unite Here Local 54 against SugarHouse

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal