Shunpiking Online Vo.4 No.4

Information picket of Halifax casino workers, Nova Scotia Dept. of Labour, 30 April 2007

News report by ENA BOUTILIER and TONY SEED

HALIFAX (1 May 2007) - IN THE MIDST of a major organizing campaign, Halifax Casino workers and the Service Employees' International Union (SEIU) have held two informative conferences at the Citadel Hotel on 1 April 2007 and in front of the Nova Scotia Department of Labour on 30 April. They are openly and graphically testifying to astonishing working conditions and wages being imposed on casino workers, lifting the veil of silence around these conditions. Their real life experience strips bare the glitz and glamorous facade of Casino Nova Scotia, the lucrative milch cow of the Province of Nova Scotia and the centrepiece of its tourism strategy.

The Casino workers are publicly admonishing the facility's owners - the Great Canadian Gaming Corporation (GCGC), a Vancouver-based monopoly - on issues of abysmal working conditions that include low (more often minimum wage) pay, non-existent job security, and a total lack of control in the workplace.

Through Casino Nova Scotia, GCGC owns and operates two gaming properties, one in Halifax with 750 slot machines and 40 table games, along with three restaurants, a bar and conference facilities, and the other in Sydney, Cape Breton, with 387 slot machines and 11 table games, a restaurant and a bar - virtual entertainment factories. The two properties operate under charter from the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation, a crown corporation which governs all forms of legalized gambling in the province.

The workers proudly reported that they have filed an application with the Labour Board to be recognized as a union. Casino workers will be voting in union certification balloting at their workplace on Thursday, May 3rd and Friday, May 4th from 6am to midnight on both days.

Some ten workers spoke to the press, and we are reproducing verbatim many of their comments in Part II. They all stressed that the experience of organizing their union local was positive and invigorating because it provided an opportunity to unite with hundreds of their co-workers who are looking for an alternative and build, in the words of cashier Julie Glendenning, "a strong united voice at work." Most have never been in a union.

From the very start of this campaign in February, the corporation has wasted no time in propounding and distributing outrageous myths and fabrications regarding the claims of the workers and the SEIU, and of workers and the labour movement in general. This series of articles explores the nature of the conflict between the casino and its employees in the context of the phenomenal rise of gambling in society and the neoliberal, anti-social offensive of the government at all levels. The dubious claims of the Great Canadian Gaming Corporation are thrown into stark relief, and a picture of a much broader struggle emerges beyond the superficial glitz and glamour of the gaming industry.

The origin and nature of the conflict

The organizing campaign at Casino Halifax originated in May and June of 2006 when casino employees began to contact local SEIU representative Tony Tracy. Through these contacts, a steadily increasing number of employees became interested and involved in organizing over the course of the following eight months, culminating in a press release officially announcing the unionizing drive on 9 February of 2007.

The most pressing factor behind the impetus to organize was the simple fact that many Casino workers are having great difficulty in supporting themselves and were often forced to leave the job, work overtime, or take a second job in order to make ends meet. Shawn Coates pointed out that the starting wage for Blackjack dealers over the past eleven years has been raised precisely once, to $7.15 an hour, when the provincial minimum wage was increased. "No one," says Tony Tracy, "would argue that these are 'good jobs'." Tracy goes on to point out the irony that the growth of such jobs was a major part of the negative public sentiment against the Casino when it opened in late 1994, as public concern focused on the high proportion of low paying and insecure jobs that were rapidly dotting the city's landscape. The public was confidently reassured by the province that such worries were unfounded in the case of the Casino, as well-paying and secure jobs were promised to flow from the city's and province's investment in the project. "Every one of those promises were broken," Tracy emphasizes.

Glitz and glamorous facade of Casino Nova Scotia on the Halifax harbour front

Indeed, over a decade later, the capital city has been flooded with low-paying service industry jobs, which Nova Scotia rationalizes as a "knowledge economy" in the name of bringing "prosperity" to all by increasing Nova Scotia's competitiveness in global markets. Such occupations are arguably typified by the influx of highly-subsidized American call centre giants on the heels of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but they also continue to include Casino Halifax as one of their most prominent exemplars, as if the liberalization of non-productive gambling boosts an economy or culture. The Great Canadian Gaming Corporation raked in $24 million in profit last year, while the Province of Nova Scotia through the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation raked in a handsome $20 million in revenue from the Halifax operation and $8 million from the Sydney operation.

Meanwhile, Halifax casino workers start their work at minimum wage ($7.15/hr) and can expect as little as a 25 cent increase over time, while unionized workers employed by the very same company in Hamilton, ON make double that wage. To further compound the regional disparity, unionized Great Canadian workers in Montreal make $16/hr, and the same such workers make as much as $18/hr in Windsor, Ontario.

The cases of the workers who spoke at the first press conference offer a graphic illustration of working life at Casino Halifax. Julie Glendenning has worked at Casino Halifax for three years and makes only $10.75/hr. She is one of the many casino workers who worry about whether or not their next paycheck will cover their rent and living expenses. Rob Mailman, a maintenance worker, is in the same predicament, and makes only $9.75/hr after working at the casino for five years. Shawn Coates, a Blackjack dealer, makes only $10.77/hr. after working at the casino for an incredible stint of eleven years. These and numerous other indignities led Coates to form a committee to address the concerns of his fellow workers. Despite what the company calls their "open door policy", this meeting was cancelled by management and replaced with another meeting - over other matters - during which workers' concerns were only minimally addressed. Workers who stand up for their rights more often than not are treated as troublemakers. Such actions highlight the almost total lack of control over the workplace on the part of Casino workers, and it is the workers' and SEIU's position that better pay and working conditions can only come with more control in the workplace in the hands of the workers themselves.

The company's response

In this struggle, the staff are facing a two-pronged attack of direct and indirect opposition from the casino corporation and the government against the right of workers to fight collectively in defence of their interests, which coincide with the interests of society. Ostensibly, Canadian workers have a democratic right to organize; in practice we find that it is frustrated at every turn, a mere privilege that can be withdrawn. Capital makes up the rules of the game, tilts the playing field in its favour, and changes the rules according to its interest. This right is not provided with a guarantee.

For instance, immediately after the organizing drive was launched, the Great Canadian Gaming Corporation responded with predictable but pernicious anti-union propaganda and deception. GCGC took pains to point out its aforementioned "open door policy" - the true extent of which was revealed when the proverbial door was slammed in the face of Shawn Coates and his co-workers - as an example of why a union is supposedly not needed at the casino. However, even if Great Canadian's "open door policy" was not a transparent misrepresentation, SEIU's position is that such a policy would still not be enough to address the concerns of workers. "You can have an open door policy," Tony Tracy points out, but adds that "with a union, you've got the key to the door." The point again comes down to the inseparability of workers' self-determination, on the one hand, and their organized ability to meet and defend their own needs and interests on the other.

Despite this, GCGC persists in claiming that there is no need to increase workers' wages on the basis of wage parity, because many of its other locations have higher costs of living than does Halifax. This is also fallacious. First, the fact that Halifax has a relatively high cost of living must be pointed out in this context, especially when workers in some more expensive cities make more than double Halifax workers' wages, which is a disparity that can scarcely begin to be explained by differences in living costs. Secondly, Halifax workers make far less than many of those who live in less expensive areas. For example, according to Statistics Canada, Halifax has a higher cost of living than does Montreal. According to the incoherent logic of the corporation, Halifax workers should be paid more than the $16/hr. wage of Montreal's Great Canadian (and, uncoincidentally, unionized) work force. Moreover, Halifax's cost of living is vastly higher than that of Regina, where unionized workers at that city's Great Canadian location have managed to achieve a higher wage than casino workers in Halifax.

The company makes another standard claim regarding profitability: the fear that better wages for its workers will adversely effect that profitability, as if the volume of profits generated from company-fixed rules over gambling and machines is somehow fragile. An SEIU press release points out, however, that Nova Scotia's Casinos (in Halifax and Sydney, NS) are the third-highest revenue generator for the company, far ahead of the company's four US-based locations and many of its Canadian ones. Moreover, the very fact that such a comparison has to be made is symptomatic of the times in which we live, in which the monopoly right to profit is considered a higher priority than the needs and well-being of working people. Even if the unionization of workers is seriously going to hinder Casino Nova Scotia's profitability, the question becomes: "So what?" Even if the Casino management's outlandish profitability claim were true, it cannot be the basis of any excuse for curbing the rights and needs of almost one thousand working people of Nova Scotia, a principal source of its wealth.

The real truth of the matter is not profitability but the declining rate of both profit and the market share of corporate casinos in general and Casino Nova Scotia in particular from gambling. We will discuss this further later in this series.

The company's propaganda campaign continued with a notice sent out to workers that warned against organizing in the workplace with the false assertion that doing so contravenes the Trade Union Act. In fact, section 54(d) of the Trade Union Act states explicitly that:

"No trade union or person acting on behalf of a trade union shall, except with the consent of the employer of an employee, attempt, at an employee's place of employment during the working hours of the employee, to persuade the employee to become, to refrain from becoming or to cease to be a member of a trade union."

Labour lawyer Ray Larkin, working on behalf of the SEIU, pointed out at the 1 April press conference that the law does not prohibit workers from persuading others to join the union at any time if they are not acting on the expressed behalf of the union. Furthermore, anybody - at any time - can organize during meals or breaks. Larkin also sent a letter to management at the Casino two days beforehand and advised them of these facts, as if they didn't know.

The struggle of the Casino workers is just, not the least of which are the horrendously unfair pay and working conditions highlighted in this article, and the absurd lengths to which corporate management will go to maintain such conditions. SEIU and the vast majority of the Halifax Casino's 600 workers believe that such conditions can only be substantively addressed when workers have control over their own lives and workplaces, and the collective power that comes with organized union representation is an indispensable part of that struggle. It will be an excellent development if the staff at the Casino in Sydney, Cape Breton also take up the initiative to organize themselves collectively.

Shunpiking reiterates its support of the right of the casino workers - and all workers - to organize for control over their work and working conditions. The organized demand for wages and working conditions commensurate with the job workers perform and to guarantee workers' rights is a most important contribution to society. For our part, Shunpiking will continue to play a role in breaking the silence on working conditions and the struggles workers, fishermen, farmers and others are waging to put their well-being in first place and provide their rights with a guarantee.