Where's the Promise of America?

Chun Zhu
Bally’s Atlantic City
Atlantic City, N.J.
UAW

Chun Zhu started working as a dealer at Bally’s Atlantic City casino more than three years ago. Chun’s wages have not risen and his benefits have shrunk. Chun and his co-workers decided it was time to fight with the new Harrah’s management for a fair deal.

Chun says workers also were motivated by Harrah’s closing of a modest clinic for workers that the previous management had provided. Harrah’s claimed it was too expensive to maintain. Meanwhile, Harrah’s managed to find multimillion-dollar bonuses for big-wigs like CEO Gary Loveman.

They also managed to find millions more to pay high-priced consultants who waged a ruthless campaign of intimidation and harassment, while the dealers began to organize. Despite this, Chun and his co-workers succeeded in forming a union, with more than 70 percent of workers in support of affiliation with the UAW. After the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) certified the election in June 2007, Harrah’s refused to bargain with the workers’ union and challenged the vote. Even after the NLRB threw out the company’s objections in April, Harrah’s flat out rejected the UAW’s request to bargain.

As Chun and his co-workers prepare to step up their fight against Harrah’s unfair labor practices, he wonders why the promise of America has not been extended to him. Chun left his native China more than 20 years ago after he became fed up with draconian and dictatorial managers who sought to control even his personal life.

“This is freedom?” he asks, wondering aloud whether he still lives in a dictatorship. Even though a heavy majority of his fellow dealers freely voted to form a union, Chun is stunned that their rights under the law are not being upheld. All they want, he says, is the same respect that management has already extended to the thousands of other casino workers whose contracts have been honored. Chun wants his voice—and the voices of more than 1,000 of his co-workers at Bally’s—to be heard.