In a letter to the casino’s soon-to-be unemployed workers on Thursday, billionair investor Carl Icahn accused their union of inciting them to destroy their own jobs by participating in the longest strike by Atlantic City’s main casino workers union.
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When it opened on April 2, 1990, the Taj Mahal, formerly owned by Donald J. Trump, had 120,000 square feet of gaming space and claimed to be the world’s largest casino. But he added the company “cannot just allow the Taj to continue burning through tens of millions of dollars” amid the union’s strike.
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A report in CNN said that Trump had filed four business bankruptcies in the last 30 years, all of which surrounded his casino holdings in Atlantic City.
About 1,000 cooks, housekeepers, bellmen, bartenders, cocktail servers and other service workers at Taj Mahal have been on strike since July 1.
“For a few million bucks, he could have had labor peace and a content work force”, McDevitt said in a statement.
This is the end of a long fight for Icahn, who purchased the Taj Mahal out of bankruptcy back in March.
“Even if the union accepted what we previously offered, which included the Unite Here health-care plan we were led to believe they wanted, we would still be losing significant amounts each month”, Rodio said, “but at least there would be hope”. It blamed workers who went on strike July 1 to regain health benefits lost in its most recent bankruptcy. The agreement breathed new life in Ceasar’s Entertainment Atlantic City properties, including Harrah’s, Caesars and Bally’s and Tropicana, but not with Taj.
Trump Taj Mahal has become something of a graveyard for the big dreams of its billionaire owners.
The strike against the Trump Taj Mahal casino is about to become the longest in the 38-year history of Atlantic City’s casino era. At the time, Trump publicly stated he would complete the integrated casino resort in about a year after he was appointed as the chairman of Resorts International.
Carl Icahn is having a bad day.
The potential turnaround for the casino was further thwarted when the almost 1,000 union workers went on strike on July 1 demanding certain benefits to be restored and better conditions.
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But according to Tony Rodio, chief executive of Icahn Enterprises’ casino subsidiary Tropicana Entertainment, the workers’ demands have made the continued operation of the casino impossible. You might recall that Icahn came in and stripped workers of most of their union benefits and healthcare coverage once the casino recovered from bankruptcy proceedings. It’s a classic take-the-money-and-run: Icahn takes hundreds of millions of dollars out of Atlantic City and then announces he is closing up shop.
