—ON THE PICKET LINE—

Maggie Trowe, Editor

 

Biggest issue is health care in Atlantic City casino strike

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Enthusiastic strikers are picketing 24 hours a day at entrances to the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort here. The nearly 1,000 members of UNITE HERE Local 54, including waitresses, porters, bellhops, custodial workers, bartenders, cooks, housekeepers and food servers, went on strike July 1.

“The biggest issue is health care which they eliminated when the company declared bankruptcy in 2014,” said union organizer Felix Perez. A federal bankruptcy judge also allowed the company to end its pension contributions. The company ended paid breaks as well.

Workers agreed to a wage freeze in 2011 when casino owners claimed they were in financial distress. The current four-year company proposal is for two years of bonuses followed by two years of yet-to-be-determined raises, Perez said. “If you include the paid break time we lost and cost-of-living, that’s nine years just to get wages back to where we were in 2011.”

“They can’t run the casino by themselves,” Hany Racheb, a cook originally from Egypt, told the Militant. “They promised to return the health care, but they haven’t. Now they know we’re serious.”

The casino hired housekeepers just before the strike, including Wanda, but she said she would not cross the picket line.

The hotel casino complex remains open with work being done by managers and nonunion workers, including gaming dealers and security guards. The casino is no longer owned by Donald Trump, but by billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

— Janet Post and Ruth Robinett

Walmart workers in China strike over working hours

Workers launched strikes at several Walmart stores in China after the company imposed a new system for scheduling work hours.

On July 1, at least 130 workers at a Walmart store in the southern city of Nanchang began marching through the aisles, chanting, “Walmart Workers Stand Up!” and “No to the Comprehensive Working Hours System,” reported the Hong-Kong based China Labour Bulletin.

The actions, described by the Financial Times as “an unprecedented bout of nationwide co-ordination by workers,” rapidly spread to a second store in Nanchang and stores in Chengdu in central China and Harbin in the northeast.

Workers are demanding a halt to a new system that allows managers to arbitrarily schedule an unlimited number of hours per day, totaling up to 174 hours per month, with no overtime pay. They’re also calling for new trade union elections. The only officially recognized union in the country, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, signed an agreement with Walmart in 2006 allowing the company to set up management-controlled unions.

One of the placards at a strike action in Chengdu read, “We support Walmart workers in the U.S. for the Fight for 15,” reported the Times.

By July 8 the workers had returned to their jobs, reported Reuters, after the company said they would consider the issue.

— Brian Williams