Taj vs. Local 54 not your typical labor dispute

Trump Taj Mahal’s operator is fighting back against novel boycott tactics being used by its main union.

Scabby the Rat, the diseased inflatable rodent who’s become a byword for union beefs, has played only a minor role in the ongoing battle over the company’s decision to end health care and pension benefits for unionized Taj workers, with the brain trust at Unite Here Local 54 turning to fresher tactics to get their message across. Taj workers have rigged a banner to weather balloons. They’ve projected images onto the casino with a spotlight. They’ve held Christmas lights over the Atlantic City Expressway.

“Anything that’s fun, that makes people turn their heads,” Jeremy Pollard, Local 54’s unofficial art director, said Wednesday.

The casino company’s fighting back, though, and recently convinced a state-court judge to bar, for now, the union from using a specially outfitted spotlight to spray boycott messages onto the Taj and its closed sister, Trump Plaza, which it did regularly this spring.

“We fully respect everyone’s right to free speech, but at the same time we’re going to protect our interest ... under all existing law,” Trump Entertainment Resorts CEO Robert Griffin said Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, Pollard (official title: Boycott Organizer) rummaged through a storage closet in the union’s Atlantic Avenue headquarters and pointed out a stack of corrugated pitch-black plastic boards, each rigged with tiny bulbs that form a lone letter.

Taj workers unveiled the lights last week, when they parked the oversized Scrabble tiles - arranged to spell “BOYCOTT TAJ” and “BOYCOTT TROP” - in front of Taj, and on the beach, and in front of Bank of America, and on an overpass on the Atlantic City Expressway.

Griffin said the company has contacted the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, which regulates signage in the Tourism District, about the tiles. “They informed us that no permits were issued, and we’ve asked them to look into the issue,” he said.

Back at the Atlantic Avenue union hall, a banner emblazoned with “BOYCOTT TAJ MA HOLE” was rigged to twinned ruby weather balloons — five-and-a-half-foot “Cloudbursters” — that evoked a pair of cherries on a slot reel.

“We plan to keep it below 30 or 40 feet,” Local 54’s Pollard said of the contraption. “It’s not going to be in federal airspace, and we’re going to stay out of the airspace that the Taj Mahal owns.”

Meanwhile, Scabby sat across the street, in the union’s parking lot, deflated in his rat hole — a Pod storage bin filled with equipment Taj workers plan to use if they strike at the casino hotel.

Source: Press of Atlantic City