Caesars Entertainment got the boot in a big way from the National Retirement Fund, which bounced the company’s three Atlantic City casinos from membership. It also
demanded $462 million from the company for “alleged withdrawal liability.” Although the NRF voted to kick Caesars out back in January, it waited until last week to take court action. “We did not start this. Caesars started this, and had Caesars not done what they were going to do, and did do, we would never have taken those actions,” said NRF Chairman Jim Brubaker.
He said the fund was motivated by the fear that Caesars was going to put its best assets, including Harrah’s Resort in Atlantic City, out of creditors’ reach. According Unite-Here Local 54, Caesars’ pensions were fully funded but the NRF definitely feared that would no longer be the case as the company goes through what is likely to be a protracted bankruptcy. “We no longer have the ability to pursue the other parts of Caesars — the so-called good Caesars — for the obligations of the bad Caesars. So we had to act before the bankruptcy,” said Brubaker.
The NRF’s expulsion set off the volcano that is Local 54 President Robert McDevitt, who characterized it as “a dumb move by some trustees on the fund who really weren’t thinking things through.” The union was already suing the NRF for its “unnecessary, premature, and irrational,” contending that Caesars was one of the fund’s biggest depositors. (If you’re wondering where Caesars is in all of this, it’s putting its pension-fund obligations into escrow.) Local 54’s suit accuses the NRF of “recklessly placed the financial health of the entire Fund in peril … rather than simply allowing the Caesars Contributions to continue their current, collectively-bargained level of contributions.”
* Although, from the way some people talk about the Caesars bankruptcy, you’d think the $10 billion writeoff is Monopoly money, there are real human consequences. A small but 
no less undeserving group of ex-Caesars employees are finding this out the hard way. As one of them said, “At my age, I’m no longer employable and will have to sell my home and somehow drastically reduce our expenses.” Why? Because Caesars has terminated the Supplemental Employee Retirement Plan, or SERP, of him and four-dozen other retirees.
Executive Vice President of Human Resources Mary Thomas shifted the blame, writing, “Under the bankruptcy code, the SERP payments you were receiving are considered a general unsecured pre-petition obligation of the debtor and cannot be paid without specific authorization from the bankruptcy court” — an authorization Caesars apparently has not sought. “The senior management team and I are grateful for you past contributions and dedication in service to our guests,” Thomas wrote to the ex-employees she was pushing under the bus, as though gratitude could pay the bills.
It’s certainly cold comfort to 68-year-old Betty Wilson, who suddenly finds herself out $4,000 a month. “Retirees count on these pensions. The company went to great lengths to say they are taking care of their current employees, but what about us? We lived on that pension and now it’s been totally taken away,” she lamented to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. It’s a criminal shame that Caesars execs like CEO Gary Loveman continue to live high on the hog but can’t find 4K a month for faithful employees like Betty Wilson.
