\nATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) \u2013 Picket lines were to go up outside Atlantic City\u2019s Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort as union members planned to protest the court-ordered termination of their health insurance and pension plans.<\/p>\n
\tThe picketing was scheduled to run from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Friday.<\/p>\n
\tThe demonstration comes a day after billionaire Carl Icahn told The Associated Press the struggling casino \u201cwill almost certainly close\u201d and that he wishes he had never answered the phone when Trump Entertainment Resorts approached him about taking over the Taj Mahal and investing $100 million to keep it afloat.<\/p>\n
\tLocal 54 of the Unite-HERE union is locked in a bitter battle over the future of the casino, which Trump Entertainment Resorts had been threatening to close on Nov. 13 if it did not get relief from having to pay insurance and pension costs. Now that it has that relief, the company says it will keep the Taj Mahal open through November, but still may shut it by the end of the year if it cannot get $175 million in state aid \u2013 a request New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney already has rejected.<\/p>\n
\tLast Friday, a federal bankruptcy court judge in Delaware granted the company\u2019s request to terminate its contract with the union. Workers\u2019 health coverage ends on Oct. 31.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe need to fight and get back what they took away from us,\u201d said Rafael Gonzalez, who has served customers in a players\u2019 club lounge for nearly 20 years. \u201cWe deserve to have health care coverage when we work so hard for this company. I am very angry about this; it\u2019s not right.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe company declined to comment.<\/p>\n
\tIt is pursuing a complicated plan to transfer ownership to Icahn, who would pump $100 million into the casino, but only if the state aid can be secured<\/p>\n
\tBob McDevitt, the union president, said the company \u201clied in court\u201d when it said it would close the Taj Mahal on Nov. 13 if it did not quickly secure all the elements of its rescue plan for the casino.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cMr. Icahn thinks he can get what he wants by using bankruptcy court and hiding behind judges,\u201d he said. \u201cIn New Jersey, in this market, that\u2019s not the final arbitrator of how it\u2019s going to be. The workers are going to be heard and we are going to tell the world that this is not OK.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tIcahn says the union refuses to work with him to keep the casino open, adding that it \u201cis instead doing everything to destroy the possibility of saving the jobs of over 3,000 employees.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tEarlier this month, McDevitt and 23 other union members were arrested when they sat down in the Atlantic City Expressway and blocked traffic entering the resort to protest the cutbacks Trump Entertainment was seeking from the judge. The union has also contacted Taj Mahal meeting and convention customers, asking them to take their business elsewhere.<\/p>\n
No replies were posted for this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) \u2013 Picket lines were to go up outside Atlantic City\u2019s Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort as union members planned to protest the court-ordered termination of their health insurance and pension plans. The picketing was scheduled to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}