Two interesting articles about the Atlantic City casino strike and the San Francisco hotel lockout:



The Las Vegas Business Press argues that the Atlantic City strike is centered around the issue of power and reads the strike as a response tothe consolidation of the gaming industry.

Taylor highlights the two companies' treatment of its employees in

Mississippi, where workers are not organized, as an indication of where the

future Harrah's might want to take the rest of its workforce unless the union

can leverage its position. He notes that a casino worker in the Mississippi

market dominated by Harrah's and Caesars earns half the average wages of a Las

Vegas employee and that employee health insurance contributions for full family

coverage total $300 monthly.

"If you make $8 an hour, you're not going to pay that," he says. "We are educating our workers that it is the same company as the

one doing business here."The future Harrah's/Caesar merger, along with the

proposed merger of MGM Mirage and Mandalay Resort Group, has emerged as the

prime issue because it will change the industry landscape. The strike is the

first negative impact to come out of the announced deals. By concentrating power

in the hands of two companies, union officials suspect that companies will be

able to refuse employees' needs more easily in future negotiations because

workers will have fewer alternatives. Taylor says the union is trying to restore

the balance by providing workers with the same clout in having contracts in the

major jurisdictions expire at the same time. "One of the origins [of the strike]

is the mergers," he adds. "[Harrah's] has this feeling that it is all powerful

and wants to cram its contract down people's throats."

So the casinos are claiming that the union's argument is groundless because no employer "would risk demoralizing its workforce with poor wages and benefits in a service-oriented industry." Tell that to Yale.



And here's another terrific David Bacon piece in the American Prospect.

The limited lockout, instituted by 10 hotels after UNITE

HERE's

Local 2 struck four others, would be continued indefinitely, Huntley

said.

The Fairmount was one of the 10, and workers there had already gone almost

two weeks without paychecks. It wasn't economic pain that upset the three

workers, however. "They just don't respect us," Tejano said.