Atlantic City workers protest benefit loss

NEW YORK — Dozens of Atlantic City casino and hotel employees protested outside the Manhattan offices of Carl Icahn on Thursday, demanding the billionaire investor meet with them and restore their health insurance benefits and pensions. Icahn currently holds the mortgage to the Trump Taj Mahal casino, which filed for bankruptcy in September, in the financially troubled New Jersey resort city. Icahn also bought the city’s Tropicana Casino and Resort out of bankruptcy in 2010.

“Who cleans the floors? Local 54! Who cooks the food? The unions do!” union members chanted, led by Paul Smith, a cook who said he has worked in the Taj Mahal’s kitchen for 21 years.

“Carl Icahn has taken basically 35 percent of our compensation package from us. He took away our health care, our pensions, our paid breaks and our severance. We are here fighting to try to get that back,” Smith said.

On Thursday, a handful of casino employees walked into the lobby of Icahn’s offices in the General Motors Building to press their demands. A security guard refused to let them pass, and told them he had called Icahn’s office but no one was available to meet with them.

“We have been trying to sit down with Carl Icahn or his representative for some time,” said Edward Watson, a union member and casino employee. “We feel we can resolve this and that we can be good partners and good employees, but we are looking for an employer to come in here to run the company in a way that will make it better. Right now, that’s not being done.” 

A Delaware judge ruled Wednesday that the bankrupt Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. can seek a creditor vote on the proposed handover of its Atlantic City assets to Icahn and the rest of the lender group.

Under the proposal, Icahn and other lenders would be able to reorganize the company by converting the bankrupt casinos’ debts into equity. Unsecured creditors — including the workers’ union — would receive almost nothing, according to an analysis of court papers by Bloomberg News. Workers said Thursday that the proposal falls short of the original deal their union reached with Icahn and the company, which would have protected the benefits of the 1,000 hospitality employees whom Local 54 represents.

Icahn put up $20 million in financing in December to keep the Taj Mahal open through bankruptcy. But workers said the once-bustling casino now looks like a ghost town. Smith said the 24-hour restaurant where he works is now only open on weekends. A total of four Atlantic City casinos closed in 2014 over financial troubles.

“I believe we deserve the original promise that was made when casinos came to Atlantic City, which was fair jobs, good-paying jobs, with great health care and something to retire on,” Smith said. “In 21 years, I was able to raise two children by myself with no state assistance, and was able to live comfortably. Right now, I am waiting on surgery that I can’t have because somebody has taken my medical benefits away.”

Neither Icahn nor a member of his staff had returned calls seeking comment by the time of publication.

Valerie McMorris, a cocktail waitress at the Taj Mahal, said she was once able to provide her husband, her 15-year-old son and herself with health insurance. But after an Oct. 18 court ruling, McMorris said the employees had just 12 days to find alternate, self-paid health care. She now spends more than $700 per month for the insurance.

“We had people on chemo treatments,” McMorris said. “Some of the girls that I work with have real health problems. Health care is the primary reason that I am there. I have been there 25 years and I still make $9 an hour. Like many of the Local 54 members, I am a tipped employee. But it’s not the business that it used to be, and you can’t make a tip if there is no one there.”

On Thursday, Watson — unable to meet with Icahn — instead handed the security guard a letter the union had written to the billionaire investor.

“You may be someone who came up through the streets of Queens and you may see yourself as the underdog fighting against entrenched corporate executives,” the letter read. “But this time you aren’t fighting executives with multi-million dollar salaries and expense accounts. This time you are fighting housekeepers, bartenders, food servers, bell people, cooks and cocktail servers. This time you aren’t fighting for the little guy, you are fighting the little guy.”

Ben Begleiter, a spokesman for the Unite Here union, said what has happened in Atlantic City isn’t unique.

“All over the country, the middle class is being pressured from all sides to give up benefits, to give up the things that made America a place that had good middle class jobs. And Atlantic City is a microcosm of that, and what these workers are going through is true elsewhere,” Begleiter said.

For Smith, who needs rotator cuff and back surgery he said isn’t covered under his Affordable Care Act health plan, time is running out.

“I just want a little respect, and to be able to retire with respect,” Smith said. “The billionaires like Carl Icahn just want to make the middle class into the poor class. I think it is corporate greed that has him coming into Atlantic City to monopolize and take over, and just strip everybody of everything. And that’s wrong.”