Hundreds of striking union members employed at Detroit’s three casinos recently visited the state capitol in Lansing to urge state lawmakers to support their strike.
More than 3,700 union workers walked off their jobs on October 17 after their contract expired. UNITE HERE Local 24, United Automobile Workers Local 7777, Teamsters Local 1038, Operating Engineers Local 324 and the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters continue to negotiate with casino management for a new contract.
Detroit’s casinos generate about $450,000 daily, according to city data. In the latest fiscal year, they produced more than $158 million from on-site gambling and more than $89 million from internet gaming.
According to CBS News, striking Greektown dealer Terri Smith said, “We’re talking about a $1 billion industry. They make the money, and after Covid-19, we kind of took concessions, minimum wages to keep them afloat and keep it open. Now they making money. They’re making a record high. So we just want our share.”
Smith said striking workers want their healthcare costs to remain the same, wages to increase, smoking policy changes at the MGM Grand and Hollywood casinos, improved job security and better working conditions.
Among the issues regarding working conditions, cocktail servers and hotel housekeepers said robotic technologies have made their jobs more difficult. Long before generative A.I. products were introduced, robotic technologies began to impact tens of thousands of hospitality jobs, for example, robots could deliver room service, prepare salads and check in hotel guests.
“The new thing is the risk to white collar workers, but blue-collar workers have faced this issue for a long time,” said Darrell West, senior fellow at the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings Institution, as reported by the New York Times.
MGM Grand cocktail server Ambre Romero said her job began to change with the arrival of Smart Bar automated cocktail dispensers in 2019. She said she received quick, superficial training on the system and frequently had to deal with malfunctioning machines and machines that didn’t offer the items customers ordered.
As a result, Romero, who makes slightly more than $13 an hour, spent more time on the machines than on customers, reducing her tips by about 30 percent. She told the Times, “I don’t know anyone who cares for the Smart Bar. It increases all of our responsibilities. We went from being just a server to a bartender and a bar server. Because of the difficulties that we run into with the Smart Bars, I’m constantly rushing. I still enjoy my job but it’s just a lot harder now.”
New technologies also have affected housekeeping. Earlier this year, MGM Grand introduced an app called HotSOS, which assigns housekeepers to rooms for cleaning and instructs them on the cleaning sequence. But the app often malfunctions, such as assigning a worker to a room that still has a guest or freezing and erasing records of cleaned rooms.
Alice Weaver, an MGM Grand housekeeper since 1999, told the Times, “You start to get crazy, especially when you know you have certain rooms you have to get to. It gets frustrating when you have to stand in the hallway trying to figure out how to get into a room.”
The housekeepers’ union is demanding at least six months’ notice when new workplace technologies are planned; an opportunity to negotiate about how the technologies will be used; training on how to use them; and severance packages when unionized workers are laid off because of new technologies.
Weaver said, “You’re used to doing your job in a certain way for many years, and then they come one day and say, ‘Well, we’re going to change that.’ If you’re going to roll something out, everybody should have a good understanding of how it works.”
