Casino Union Storm Icahn office To Protest Taj Mahal Cuts

The Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City has been in the spotlight for the past few months as the owners initially filed for bankruptcy but then got bailed out when billionaire Carl Icahn decided to offer them a lifeline and bail them out. Icahn has a history of working with struggling casinos and bringing them back to a place where they can once again show profitability.

Icahn was initially reluctant to offer a lifeline to the struggling Taj Mahal as he believed that the casino was in real poor shape and would find it hard to recover in Atlantic City’s declining gambling market.

Icahn finally decided to invest $20 million and bail the Taj Mahal out as he did not want the 3,000 employees of the Taj Mahal to be laid-off.

Icahn released a statement saying that he went through a tough childhood and knows how hard it is to make ends meet. He told casino workers that he had to fight his way up to the top and will fight once again to ensure that the Taj Mahal does not shutdown and lay-off its entire staff.

However, Icahn decided to cut a number of benefits for these 3,000 workers in order to reduce the overhead of the Taj Mahal. Icahn decided to remove pension coverage and health insurance for these 3,000 workers and his proposal was approved by a bankruptcy judge in Nevada. The removal of these key benefits has not gone down well with the casino union and they decided to stage a protest outside Icahn’ office this week.

Close to 100 workers from the Casino union marched into Icahn’s office to submit a letter and ask him to restore their full benefits. They were stopped at the front desk and informed that their letter would be handed over to Mr. Icahn.

The letter which was submitted to Icahn’s office stated

You may be someone who came up through the streets of Queens, and you may see yourself as the underdog fighting against entrenched corporate executives. But this time, you aren’t fighting executives with multimillion-dollar salaries and expense accounts. This time you are fighting housekeepers, bartenders, food servers, bell people, cooks and cocktail servers. This time you aren’t fighting for the little guy, you are fighting the little guy.

Carl Icahn has not yet responded to the letter but the casino union remains hopeful and expects the billionaire to respond within the next week.