“The defined-term roles are the most critical in the entertainment and hospitality business, and their engagement with our guests will help define us,’’ Revel said yesterday in a statement. “We want to ensure that these high profile professionals are always engaged with our guests.’’
Under the policy, first reported by The Press of Atlantic City, jobs subject to term limits of four to six years include dealers, valets, cocktail servers, bartenders, and front-desk clerks.
The casino says it will recruit for supervisory positions from among those workers and will encourage advancement through the ranks. At the end of the job term, any employee who has not been promoted will have to reapply for the same job and compete with all other comers.
That, the city’s main casino union says, will have the effect of purging the workforce of all but the youngest, most attractive faces.
Bob McDevitt, president of Local 54 of UNITE HERE, said Revel is trashing an unwritten Atlantic City rule that casino jobs are to be long-term employment meant to provide a decent standard of living.
“They’re treating their workers like baseball players, but paying them like hot dog vendors,’’ McDevitt said. “These are supposed to be good, stable jobs, not indentured servitude. But they’re treating them like pitchers at spring training, who can be cut at any time. Thanks, but you’re outta here. See ya.’’
McDevitt says the casino is engaging in blatant age discrimination, which the casino denies.
Its job applications do not mention age.
An online application form at Revel’s website says a cocktail server “is responsible for providing prompt, friendly and efficient cocktail service.’’ It calls the position “a defined-service cycle role with an employment period of 4, 5 or 6 years.’’
The cutthroat environment in which Atlantic City’s 11 casinos operate (12 after Revel opens) is making them look for any potential advantage over rivals.
In the past four years, Atlantic City’s collective casino revenues have fallen from $5.2 billion to $3.6 billion, with a further decline to come at the end of this year. The casinos have shed thousands of jobs, and are concerned with making sure the remaining workers present as appealing an image to customers as possible.
Pressures on Atlantic City cocktail servers are nothing new. When the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa opened in 2003, it limited how much its cocktail servers, dubbed “Borgata Babes,’’ could weigh. Servers who gain too much weight could be fired.
In 2008, two former cocktail servers at the Borgata settled a multimillion-dollar sex discrimination lawsuit against the casino.
Las Vegas casinos generally do not impose time limits on entire classifications of workers.
Revel says its new $2.4 billion casino will jump-start the sluggish local economy.
