The New Look of a '1099er' - an Atlantic City Casino Cocktail Server - By John Hendrie

The soon to open Revel Casino in Atlantic City has an unusual Hiring Policy, where front line employees will have term limits of four to six years. Then, they must reapply for those very same positions.   I am not even sure that “employee” is the operative word here.  This looks more like a contractor concept, demonstrating the creative means a major employer will embrace to challenge irksome requirements in the workplace, particularly one where “image” is so important. 

As the Huffington Post reported, the policy, as designed, “will attract the most highly professional people who are inspired by a highly competitive workplace”.  That certainly is a statement of intent we all seek, but usually in the employee-employer relationship, which over the last thirty years has been fractured, scuttled, devalued, diminished and so forth – you are welcome to use you own descriptive.

What does this new approach to hiring and semi-retention really mean?  Firstly, a touch of recent history.  This is the first Casino to be built in Atlantic City since the opening of the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in 2003, just before the economic slide began, which has been devastating to this resort Destination.  Coupled with the success of Gaming operations in neighboring Pennsylvania and the new initiatives in the New York City environs, the Revel has been considered the potential “silver bullet” for revitalization, projected to provide over 5,000 full-time jobs and $2.4 Billion in revenue.  This is not small time, although the hopes might be a stretch (you gotta dream).

This is also a union town, represented heavily by Unite-Here, Local 54, which represents 14,000 members within eleven existing casinos.  Not surprisingly, the Union and the Revel have not reached any contract terms. Unite-Here, correctly, I believe, deduced that the Revel was treating these workers as Independent Contractors, which, of course, flies in the face of Union tenets of seniority, shifts, bidding, vacations, Pension Fund and prime assignments, to name a few benefits of membership.  The Union also postulates that this hiring policy with term limits is also age discrimination, where the company, Revel, counters that it simply wants to keep its work force "fresh" for what are called "high-touch" positions that are key to the Revel's “image” (I am sure that I do not have to draw that picture).  Essentially, the guest contact workers (cocktail servers, dealers, bell staff, valets and front desk personnel) would need to compete for their positions every four, five or six years with other applicants, and they would lose their positions if not the best qualified (this determination could be a problem).

This could be quite an epic confrontation with entertainment and gaming companies watching all the maneuvering, posturing and the legal briefs, as they evaluate the cost of image.  For organized labor, this challenges the very bedrock of their movement.  For the average citizen and employee, this is just another example of the need to reorient your career steps and goals, recognizing that we all are really contractors. There is neither loyalty nor security in Corporate America, and we must build our own portfolio of skills and expertise with multiple companies and then move on.  For Atlantic City, which is trying to reinvent itself as a Destination, this will not be good copy.

 

 

 

 

 

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