Striking Trump Taj Mahal workers warned that if the
Republican presidential candidate is elected, the financial plight seen in
Atlantic City's hospitality industry could happen elsewhere in the Philadelphia
region.
About a dozen UNITE HERE Local 54 workers joined the
Democratic Labor Council on Monday afternoon – 25 days after they began
picketing around the clock outside the Carl Icahn-owned Trump Taj Mahal casino.
Fighting for better health and pension benefits, the
union members said they have not had a formal negotiation session with Taj
Mahal leadership since June 30. Four other casinos – Bally’s Atlantic City
Hotel and Casino, Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City, Caesars Atlantic City Hotel
and Casino, and the Tropicana Casino, also owned by Icahn – came to terms with
the union and avoided a strike.
“You can give to one of your properties, Tropicana, but
you can’t give to Taj Mahal workers. That’s not right,” said Chuck Baker, a
56-year-old relief cook who has spent 26 years working at the Taj Mahal.
Icahn has previously said he cannot satisfy the workers’
demands because of Taj’s financial position, which emerged from bankruptcy in
February 2016. Messages left with his offices Monday were not returned.
Baker, an Atlantic City native, lumped Icahn, the
activist investor who bought Taj out of bankruptcy, with the GOP’s Donald
Trump, whose name still adorns the casino he brought to bankruptcy court more
than 25 years ago.
“He ran Taj Mahal in the ground. He came, he pillaged, he
ripped us off,” Baker said about Trump. “They are big business, they are
corporate. They come in and they take, take, take.”
The comments from the striking casino workers were echoed
Monday night in the convention by New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. He told the tens
of thousands of people at the Wells Fargo Center that Trump "got rich
while his companies declared multiple bankruptcies."
Others speaking on the first night of the Democratic
National Convention made similar statements to the roaring crowd. Sen.
Elizabeth Warren brought up Trump's history of running companies that declare
bankruptcy and repeated what many in Atlantic City already know – Trump skipped
out on paying or underpaid some of the contractors who helped build the massive
casinos.
"What kind of man cheats students, cheats investors,
cheats workers?" she asked.
Union members warned that cheating led to Icahn's
takeover and the situation they are currently facing.
UNITE HERE Local 54 spokesman Ben Begleiter added the Taj
workers' fight could set a standard for other hotel and casino workers
throughout the region – a reason why the labor organization is urging others to
vote Hillary Clinton in November.
"Atlantic City is the standard for hospitality
workers in the region, and lots of hospitality workers will look at what the
workers in Atlantic City make and say that’s what I want. I know that is true
in Baltimore," Begleiter said.
Baker added that the presumptive Democratic presidential
nominee stands with the "working class," and Trump does not.
"It is not about being against Trump," Baker
said. "It is for Hillary, because Hillary is for the working class. She is
about changing American in the right direction."
Source: Philadelphia
Business Journal
No comments:
Post a Comment