After 16 years, I’m only making $8 an hour. I am a single woman. I have a mortgage and bills to pay. We don’t have a prescription plan. I can’t afford to buy medicine and the health insurance—that I have to pay $21 a week for—is so bad, my doctor won’t even take it.

On top of that, Tizzano says the maximum salary for dealers is $8.50 an hour—and after you reach that level, “you can’t get anymore raises.” Not that the casino’s raises are that generous—the most anyone gets is 25 cents an hour after an annual evaluation, but most dealers are getting between 12 cents and 13 cents, she says.

We want to be treated like human beings. They’ve taken our prescription plan. We’re only getting 13-cent raises. They’ve taken everything. What more do they want—my firstborn?

Tired of being treated with a lack of respect, the 850 dealers voted 572­–128 to join the UAW. Says Tizzano:

Everybody was so happy Sunday. We haven’t had happy faces around here in a long time.

The new bargaining unit at Caesars includes full- and part-time table game dealers, keno and simulcast workers. Dealers’ issues include low pay, meager health benefits, no seniority rights and poor treatment on the job.

UAW Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Bunn, who heads the union’s Technical, Office and Professional Department, says:

We’re delighted for workers at Caesars. This huge victory is the first step in a larger effort by dealers across Atlantic City to form their own union. The next step is to work with Caesars management to secure a first contract that benefits casino workers and the gaming industry in New Jersey.

The vote at Caesars is the first in a citywide effort by dealers to form a union. Dealers at Trump Plaza will vote on whether to join a union March 31, and dealers at several other casinos are actively involved in organizing efforts. The UAW has represented dealers, cage cashiers and slot technicians at Detroit’s three casinos since 1999. Joe Ashton, who directs the UAW’s Region 9, says there has been “a tidal wave of support from community leaders, legislators and dealers across Atlantic City, as well as from our members at Detroit houses.”

Virtually all other workers at Caesars belong to unions. Now is the dealers’ turn, and we will work with them to secure a contract that provides them with better wages, better benefits and a voice in the decisions that affect them and their families.

The national AFL-CIO and New Jersey union movements joined with the workers in a major campaign to win a union; and after working with lawmakers, several key state leaders wrote letters to Caesars’ management supporting the workers. Among them: U.S. Rep. Robert Andrews, a Democrat, and Republican Reps. Frank LoBiondo and Christopher Smith. Also, more than 60 state legislators signed a petition calling for a union. The petition said, in part:

With union representation, Atlantic City casino dealers, like many other unions in the gaming industry, will have a powerful voice to negotiate for better salaries, fair benefits and a secure retirement. This will benefit the dealers, their families, our communities and the casinos.

Charles Wowkanech, president of the New Jersey State AFL-CIO, was instrumental in rounding up political support for the workers. Says Wowkanech:

Each time as support seemed to be there [for a union], companies would come there at the last minute with a big raise and improvements in health care. Over time, employees have seen the disparity between the rest of the workforce and the dealers. This time they don’t believe the false promises.

Roy Foster, president of the Atlantic and Cape May Counties Central Labor Council, says the vote boiled down to the greed of the casino owners:

The dealers reached out for a union because of the discrepancies between the union members and the nonunion. The nonunion guys are paying $92 a week for health care and the union workers aren’t paying anything. The union workers have job stability, health care and good wages. The casinos are not doing the right thing by the dealers.

When a worker has been on the job 20 years, he shouldn’t fear for his job.

The workers had hoped to bypass the National Labor Relations Board- (NLRB-) supervised election process by gathering signed union authorization cards from more than 60 percent of the dealers. If the Employee Free Choice Act were the law today, the signed cards could be submitted to the NLRB, and the board would require Caesars to bargain with the unions chosen by the employees. But under current law, the casino has the right to decide whether or not to honor the employees’ choice or to demand that the employees go through the NLRB election process, which gives the employer the opportunity to pressure and harass employees into renouncing their decision to form a union.

Now Caesars, claiming some dealers were coerced into voting for the union, says it will seek another vote. Tizzano says that is an insult:

572-128 and they want another election! It’s a landslide. This is all about them trying to prolong getting to the bargaining table. Our minds are made up. If they get another election, the vote will be even bigger.

Speaking at a rally for the casino workers on March 12, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka said:

They say that in the gaming industry, the house always wins. Well, I have news for them: with the kind of support and solidarity we’re seeing here today, these houses will fall.

…every person in America deserves a Voice at Work—blue collar workers, white collar workers, native born workers, immigrant workers, all workers.

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