The contract had expired September 15. About 10,000 bartenders, servers, housekeepers, and other service employees walked off the job October 1.

“The casinos didn’t think the union could stay strong and united,” said Mary Jo Cameron, a picket captain at the Hilton, in a phone interview with the Militant.

Workers said they won better wages and improved health-care benefits and pensions.

Union officials had been pressing for a three-year contract to coincide with the expiration date of casino contracts in Las Vegas, Detroit, Chicago, and other riverboat gaming cities. The deal they signed in the end, though, lasts five years, which is what the bosses had demanded.

Workers said the new contract also addresses the issue of subcontracting by keeping most of the old agreement in place, promising that no current jobs would be replaced.

The Tropicana and Resorts casinos, however, did already subcontract with a new outlet.

“This just means we will need to fight to recruit the new workers into the union,” said Cameron

This was the longest casino strike in Atlantic City’s history.

The contract includes protections for immigrant workers, improved leave of absence and promotion language, and a stronger shop steward system, Cameron and other workers said.

Every striker has the right to return to work with continuous seniority. Workers who were on probation when they walked out will be able to count their days on the picket line as part of the probationary period. Strikers also do not lose time for wage raises, vacation, and seniority for the month they stayed on the picket lines. Workers also said that the contract promised no harassment or retaliation against any striker or picket captain.

Donald Sloan, however, a doorman at Tropicana, said that upon returning to work the company had taken away their break room and redefined their jobs. This resulted in a cut in pay. “We got what we wanted so they are just trying to mess with us,” Sloan said. “But, we will fight through the union and beat this back too.”

According to union officials, about 6 percent of the strikers crossed the picket line. They have been allowed back into Local 54 by signing up as “core members,” which means they work under the contract’s terms but have no voting rights in the union.  
 
 
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