The Raw Deal At Delaware Park.

As of last week it became official: I work for a sweat shop. You see, for about the last year a rumor had been making it's way around Delaware Park about how the management intended to raise the jackpot pay outs on the slot machines to $1,200. This mean the tips(and our paychecks) would decrease dramatically.

Naturally, one always hopes such rumors are untrue, because tips have always been a part of our salaries. Well, the management, without ever actually telling the slot attendants a damn thing, did this dirty deed to us . Oh, we received a letter from the head of the techs apologizing for what he called "a miscommunication". But to me(and many others) it was nothing more than a page full of typical management bullshit replete with crocodile tears; they knew damn good and well what they were doing to us and didn't care.

The upper management knows they've got us over the proverbial barrel;the economy is the shitter right now. Jobs are scarce, so we've got nowhere to go except the unemployment line. Upper managements lousy, stinking attitude is: Like it or leave. So they can do to us whatever they please; we slot attendants are merely numbers to them and nothing more.

And most of the slot attendants are totally pissed! To quote a co-worker," We'll now be working for McDonalds wages." However the well paid management doesn't give a pinch of shit about our shrinking paychecks. They continue to receive their fat paychecks while those in the slots department with families and bills are forced to take second jobs. In other words, they'll be working twice as hard to make up the difference. It's damned unfair.

This particular point was driven home to me on Monday when seven bus loads of customers came to Delaware Park. At the end of the day I was sore and tired from running around servicing the patrons for eight hours. I came to the realization that I was working harder for less money. I felt taken advantage of and it sucked big time.

The worst part is that management could have easily waited until January to make the change. It's no skin off their ass for them to have postponed the severe drop in our paychecks. Oh well, Merry Christmas to us!

Now your most likely thinking," But what about their union,Local 27? Won't they come to their members rescue and right this terrible wrong?" Yeah. Right. That lousy, lazy, lethargic group of turds, the bastards who sold us up the river during the last union negotiations to this date have done, zip, nada, nothing, zilch, squat. What a great union, huh? They're too busy patting themselves on the back for the shitty contract they negotiated for us five years ago to bother helping us now.

Oddly enough, some of the slot attendants are beginning to rejoin the union in a last ditch attempt to regain some of our lost power. As one co-worker said to me," It's us against them." But as I've mentioned before in a previous blog titled " Why I Quit Local Union 27", it is a weak, ineffectual, impotent union. A union is supposed to be the lion that looks out for it's members welfare. Our union dues were going to support a fat,lazy lion without claws or teeth who does nothing but lay around all day. Nowadays, said lion is on life support gasping and wheezing for breath. But who knows? Maybe the union membership will dramatically increase and the union will become more powerful than it has been in years. And in turn they'll be able to right this grievous wrong done to the slot attendants.

But I'm not going to hold my breath on this one. And neither should anyone else for that matter.