Detroit casino workers enter third week of strike
DETROIT, Mich. (WNDU) - The strike continues for casino workers from Detroit.
It’s week three of the strike, with those on the picket lines calling for a pay raise and better benefits. Casino employees from Detroit say they got the city’s casinos through the pandemic - sacrificing their raises and shouldering heavier workloads.
“Since the pandemic, we have all three casinos, we have lost 1,500 jobs,” said Millege McCaster, a Hollywood Casino at Greektown employee. “You are now going in sometimes, where you are doing two or three jobs. That’s a lot to put on one person.”
Feeling overworked and underappreciated, those on strike are after increased wages, better health insurance, better retirement benefits, workload reductions, and job security as the popularity of online gambling increases.
“The team members at all three casinos deserve a good fair contract that, you know, shows that they do respect their employees,” McCaster said.
Although the casinos are remaining open through the strike, Play Michigan says these unionized workers account for 75% of their employees.
“We think that they are about at 50% of their full operation with the staff that they have in place. So with that, they’re probably losing out on about 1.5 to 2.5 million dollars a day, daily, in combined gaming revenue,” said Drew Ellis with Play Michigan.
Play Michigan estimates that the state is missing out on about $300,000 to $500,000 a day in tax revenue because of the strike. They also say that Detroit casinos have little control over third-party online gambling companies, making the requests for job security in this era, a hard ask.
“It’ll be interesting to see how that maybe gets touched on. I think the biggest issues right now are the wages and the health care. The longer this goes, the more it sets back the growth that Detroit has been seeing, you know, coming out of the pandemic. I think that’s a big part of it too, is it would be good to see this end just for the sake of Detroit overall,” Ellis finished.
Hoping to make a deal that gets Michigan’s 3,700 striking casino workers back on the job.
