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For a few months now Atlantic City has been suffering financially. Since the recession many businesses have suffered and gambling is just another one. The biggest problem with gambling is that it is dependent on people’s discretionary funds. Since the recession, discretionary funds are what most people have not had. They are still trying to cover their everyday bills, and have little financial tolerance for hobbies. People quickly cut hobbies out of their everyday budgets and that included gambling. Atlantic City is a city that is reliant on people’s discretionary funds to make it financially and without patrons, it has had a difficult time reviving.

Interestingly enough, Atlantic City made a change in its casinos this past week. Dealers at the Tropicana Casino and Resort just were given raises as a move by its union. According to the union, they also negotiated the pay increase as part of a five-year long change in pay rates. Dealers in the area all joined forces to come up with better compensation packages. Most workers in the US are worried about the future of their employment due to the recession. Part of the agreement was to give dealers an 18% raise for the next five years. Part of the reason they were able to get the deal done was due to affiliation the organization had with the United Auto Workers who also worked out a similar deal in past years. The best news is that it is a positive move in the direction of signifying a redesign of the market. Though numbers are still down, part of the way to change the market is to start fueling money into integral parts of the community and that means employees. If gambling casinos can assure their workers are happy, then that is one aspect of the business model they won’t have to worry about in coming months. They also realize that gamers need to be kept happy and part of that is making sure that dealers, casino workers and casino floors are all premiere. Atlantic City operators know that they need to make things as good as they can be to continue bringing in workers and keep them happy with their pay structures.

Dealers and Wynn Las Vegas are getting closer to an agreement on a union contract, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows. All the major issues have been agreed upon except one final decision. The filing by Wynn Las Vegas said the hotel-casino and Las Vegas Dealers Local 721 have reached agreement on all issues except the duration of a contract. Union director Joseph Carbon said the two sides are only “two or three years apart” on the length of the contract. He cautioned, however, that some of the dealers are unhappy with some of the language about tips. He did not provide details on what the contract proposal says about the hotel-casino’s tip policy.

“Not everybody’s always happy, especially with the first contract,” Carbon said. “It’s groundbreaking and I think people have to understand that.” Unionization in Las Vegas has a historic past, most of which has been unsuccessful. Dealers at the Tropicana, Stratosphere and the now-demolished New Frontier approved union representation, although the only contract that was ever signed covered just 105 dealers at the New Frontier. The current agreement at the Wynn Hotel is significant as it may open doors for many more similar cases.  The dealers at Wynn Las Vegas voted 3-to-1 in favor of a union in May 2007, eight months after the hotel-casino changed its tip policy so certain table-game supervisors could begin receiving a share of the dealers’ tip pool.

The dealers at Caesars Palace also voted for a union in late 2007, but negotiations broke down in December. While there still has been no contract signed, the news of progress in the union contract talks at the Wynn came on the same day that attorneys for the dealers were granted an additional week to file briefs in the dealers’ complaint against the hotel-casino’s tip-pooling policy.  Wynn dealers are asking Nevada Labor Commissioner Michael Tanchek to find that the hotel-casino’s tip policy violates state labor laws. They are asking him to award about 500 dealers $35 million in back pay and penalties. Attorneys for Wynn have maintained that the tip policy complies with state laws and is comparable to a restaurant sharing tips between busboys, bartenders and waiters. The dealer’s attorneys have until March 22 to file briefs in the tip-pooling case. If the briefs are filed by March 22, attorneys for both sides will have until April 19 to respond. Tanchek is expected to rule on the case by the end of May. A ruling was initially planned for January, but in December, Tanchek pushed the date to April because he needed more time than expected to review 55 hours of testimony from the hearing. Attorneys for both sides have said any decision by Tanchek will likely be appealed, probably to Clark County District Court, where dealers first challenged the policy in 2006.

There is trouble brewing between unionized dealers and a local contract at Caesar’s Palace. It’s been two years since any progress was made with the labor contract at the casino. The union leader said that dealers were treating the union like “garbage”. Joe Carbon, the gaming director of the Transport Workers Union, said, “These dealers are professional people who take pride in their jobs, but quite frankly, they are treated like a bunch of second-class citizens.” The allegations that are running rampant in the debate are the direct result of contentious labor negotiations in the union setting. Many companies act different towards unions, often times seeing them as the enemy.

There are approximately 20,000 people who are dealers in the Las Vegas valley. Casinos think they need to control dealers with a hard-hand to retain authority and boost productivity, enforce customer service and move dealers to certain different areas. Director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming Bill Eadington said, “Table games’ managers want to put fear in the mind of dealers that if they do something wrong, they will be disciplined. It is a rough justice type of situation.”

Most employers in right-to-work states such as Nevada have complete discretion to fire nonunion workers. But dealers complain that kind of control turns a casino floor into a troublesome area where the slightest mistake could be grounds for discipline. Casino floors aren’t offices, nor are they like restaurants or retail outlets that sell goods and services. They’re recreational places on sensory overload where emotions run high. Dealers invested in their jobs view themselves as casino liaisons — customer service representatives who can soften the blow of a big loss, congratulate a player who has won and provide information about the casino depending on how receptive the player is to conversation. Dealers who have thrived in these high-stress jobs for years say casinos typically don’t fire dealers over a single mistake. If it’s minor enough, dealers get second or third chances to prove their skills. That could change, however, for dealers who complain about other aspects of their jobs to peers or supervisors, they say. They could be looked at as ‘troublesome’ and be disciplined or even let go. It’s a difficult time for union workers as they try to continue negotiations.

The union is studying Station Casino and what they are finding, isn’t good. The Culinary Local 226 is requesting the casino’s creditors demand funds from insiders who profited from their buyout earlier this year. The casino is seeking bankruptcy protection but the Union is focusing on investor funding as a means of managing debt. Station Casinos is not happy about the demand and reportedly called it “silly” and “just more of some corporate harassment by the union leadership that has been going on for years due to their frustration over not being able to persuade our employees to join the union.”

The union has been trying for years now to help the casino reorganize its assets. Those assets include 18 properties that employ about 13,000 people. The union has also sent letters to creditors requesting that they lean on the company’s insiders to return money they made individually from the buyout. In the statement the union wrote: “Station Casinos could have averted bankruptcy if not for the substantial debt it took on largely to enrich a small group of company insiders.” The union said the amount was close to $1 billion of the $5.4 billion buyout price. They also assert that the company’s debt tripled and reached $5.2 billion between 2005 and 2007 and most of the debt being used to buy back shares and fund the buyout. They believe that Station Casinos could have avoided bankruptcy if they had reworked their debt and buyout differently.

The statement added, “You would think that in these difficult economic times, when thousands of union members have lost their jobs, that the Culinary union leadership would have something more productive to do with their members’ dues than to create and distribute this silly report concerning a bankruptcy proceeding in which they have absolutely no involvement.”  The report was released just prior to Station Casinos’ next bankruptcy date. They are scheduled to appear in front of the judge and answer question on their actions.  Boyd Gaming Corp will also be in attendance and request that a third-party examiner be allowed to review the gambling company’s financial records over the past five years. The casino is seeking a four-month extension from the November 25^th deadline to file a proposal.

Paul White, a UK-based online poker affiliate, and Paula Bliss, an affiliate promoting online casinos, have lead the way to forming the Gambling Affiliate Union, or GAU.  The organization is set on helping affiliates and fair protocols in terms of affiliate marketing of gaming websites. Paul White stated, “I get extremely annoyed at times about how affiliates are treated and how they get walked over by some affiliate programs. That is really the principle behind this: to make sure that affiliates get a fair deal from affiliate programmes. United, we have a stronger voice. We’re not here to police affiliates and make demands that nobody works with certain programs, because that would be counter-productive by making it hard to talk to the affiliate programs. But we are willing to take legal action to protect members if absolutely necessary.”

So far the GAU has 100 members but is setting 1,000 members within the next six months and 5,000 members within the next year as their goal numbers. With the huge growth in the market, this shouldn’t be too difficult.  Gambling analyst Paul Boden stated, “Affiliate marketing is huge in the casino market and with the state of the gambling market on the cusp of huge growth due to legalization, it will only increase affiliate potential. There has to be some set of rules and code of conduct put into play to protect people wanting to get into the market.” Affiliate programs are a large source of problems for affiliate accounts due to the number of disputes that are filed due to rates of pay, non-payment or other money-related issues. There are always problems with contracts and negotiations to be addressed. The problem is that the number of places to handle the contracts is limited. That’s why the Gambling Affiliate Union was recently formed.

The main goal of GAU is to settle and arbitrate between affiliate and their casino affiliate programs. The GAU is also looking to abolish companies that have a record of bad payment schedules, or other problem issues. They are hoping to be what eCOGRA is to online casinos in that they are able to police the websites to ensure end-users and the companies are satisfied with their relationships.