Just One More Hand: Life in the Casino Economy
Ellen Mutari, Deborah M. Figart
Language: English
Pages: 280
ISBN: 1442236671
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Just One More Hand tells a story that workers all over can relate to: an industry that promised a solid and stable livelihood is being transformed by competitive pressures, causing employees to lose their economic footing. What seemed like a good job one day becomes a bad job the next. Incorporating the real experiences of casino employees, the book demonstrates the difficulties for local communities that are building new casinos in the hopes of luring tourists. Local communities placing all their chips on casinos as an economic development strategy face increasingly long odds.
Life stories of individual workers in Atlantic City are explored in the context of the history of the city and the now-global gaming industry. With more and more casinos competing for customers, employees are feeling the brunt of cost-cutting measures, including the wholesale closure of some casinos. While long-time employees are fighting against concessions and wage stagnation, younger workers juggle multiple part-time and seasonal jobs at several casinos. Policy makers hoping to offset these trends are trying to rebrand Atlantic City for a younger, hipper, and more well-to-do clientele using public-private partnerships. Unfortunately, scant attention is being paid to the core issue in economic development—the need for sustainable livelihoods and meaningful work. Here, Ellen Mutari and Deborah Figart explore the realities of the industry and the lives and challenges the workers within it are facing.
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because it was a coin—basically, it’s a metal wafer that has to go inside the machine. It’s a bucket inside the machine, a hopper, that pays out a little hole in the bottom of the slot machine where excess coins go. . . . But it used up a tremendous amount of manpower, because somebody had to sell the coins, someone had to collect the coins. Someone had to pay the jackpot. Some- ST ORI E S FROM A C ASI N O ECONOMY 13 one also had to fill the machine with money when it ran out. And it employed
important an output as the goods and services being produced. The interviews were digitally recorded and then transcribed, changing the names of the participants and omitting names of coworkers (but not casino owners) and customers. Occasionally, we have altered or obscured biographical details in order to protect the confidentially of our sources. Our aim was not to generate a random sample but rather to target representative constituencies. We sought to include employees in a variety of
tended to downplay their experiences—perhaps because they needed to in order to survive. As SueBee tells her story, she describes the transformation she has witnessed to the industry, both while she was there and since she left. She is particularly struck by the effects of deregulation, cost cutting, and cutbacks. Just the previous week, she read a newspaper story about a problem at an Atlantic City casino where cards were being counted by players. Casinos had taken to purchasing pre-shuffled
that someone can be home with the kids. When is their “together time”? In the scholarly literature, odd shifts in around-the-clock staffing are called “nonstandard” or “unsocial” hours. 16 A 2007 survey of 700 frontline casino workers in Atlantic City found that 2–3 percent “almost always” or “often” had (schedule) issues sufficient enough to interfere with their job. Another 15–20 percent were “sometimes” affected by these pressures. 17 In the survey, child care was the key issue for casino
table, or trying to get a new union decertified by getting petition signatures for a new election (as in union election, take two). These are three tactics used by casino management to delay the deal for a first union contract. It took nine months before contract negotiations began at Caesars in late 2007 and about four months before they started at Tropicana in January of 2008. The big issues were wages, job security, medical benefits, and pensions. Trump Plaza and Bally’s took their