Foxwoods Resort Casino - Unionization of Employees

Unionization of Employees

Beginning with an employee led website to gain support and sharing of ideas of how to react to the changes employees had been going through, a small base of employees approached some union organizations to determine if unionizing would be the best fit for the dealers of Foxwoods Resort Casino. After deciding on the UAW in June 2007, the UAW helped start collecting signatures from dealers in support of a union, the United Auto Workers announced in September 2007 that it had collected the requisite number of signatures needed to hold an election to determine whether table games and poker dealers desired union representation. The Tribe challenged the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board over on-reservation Native American enterprises. Following hearings, the National Labor Relations Board ruled in favor of the union and ordered a union election to be conducted. On November 24, 2007, employees voted to unionize with 60 percent in favor and 40 percent against. The Foxwood dealers cast 1,289 ballots for the union, 852 against representation, and 36 additional ballots were challenged. Approximately 2,700 dealers and dual-rate dealers were eligible to vote in the election.

After the workers won their union, Foxwoods Casino appealed the election results, reasserting its jurisdictional challenge and claiming that the National Labor Relations Board made mistakes in conducting the vote, that the NLRB only printed the ballot in English and only provided notices explaining the election in only one form of the Chinese language, disenfranchised workers, and that interactions by union officials and some voters were unlawful. An NLRB Administrative Law Judge ruled that the union and the board provided ample explanation of the election in a variety of languages. Foxwoods has appealed the decision.

The Foxwoods dealers union have also pushed the state of Connecticut to improve the conditions of their workplace. Workers and union organizers pushed to have legislation that would ban smoking on the casino floors of Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. The Mashantucket tribe has opposed a complete ban on smoking, however in May 2009, Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell signed an agreement with Foxwoods Casino to voluntarily limit smoking areas in the casino.

Currently, the Mashantucket Pequot and the UAW are negotiating on a contract under the Mashantucket Pequot's tribal law. As of December 18, 2008, these negotiations have resulted in at least 21 dealers returning to work following a massive layoff of 700 employees in October 2008.