{"id":18443,"date":"2016-06-27T11:30:28","date_gmt":"2016-06-27T19:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=18443"},"modified":"2016-06-27T11:30:28","modified_gmt":"2016-06-27T19:30:28","slug":"can-atlantic-city-withstand-a-strike-cosmo-gets-a-complete-makeover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/can-atlantic-city-withstand-a-strike-cosmo-gets-a-complete-makeover\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Atlantic City withstand a strike?; Cosmo gets a complete makeover"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Atlantic City<\/strong> waits to see how long it takes Glenn Straub<\/strong> to get Revel<\/strong> reopened (we’re now at D-Day Plus Twelve and counting), Local 54<\/strong> of Unite-Here<\/strong> is girding itself for a strike. It’s amassed a war chest and is talking tough.\u00a0“The losses in revenue to the \"resorts-atlantic-city\"casinos will very quickly eclipse the cost of restoring benefits and giving people a fair raise,” says the union’s Ben Begleiter<\/strong>. Or will it? Industry analyst Steve Norton<\/strong>, who’s spent a long time on the management side of the desk points out that — with four casinos having gone under — there’s a large force of potential scabs<\/a> who could fill the vacated jobs, should the casinos decide to wait Unite-Here out. Also standing to lose from a strike is Atlantic City itself, which would have to detail extra police power to keep things calm on the picket line. Nor is a sudden diminution in salaries being paid to casino workers likely to help a city that is number-one in the nation for foreclosures.<\/p>\n

Atlantic City has gone 12 years without a casino strike and it’s not clear whether Unite-Here can strike for\u00a034 days, as it did in 2004. Then again, with operating profits at the city’s casinos way up, thanks to the rightsizing of the market, rank-and-file workers have no appetite for the status quo, never mind further concessions. But the casinos were able to wrest give-backs from the union when times were good. What will Local 54\u00a0do now that the economy looks much less certain? Of all the concerned parties, it is the casinos themselves that appear to have the least cause for worry.<\/p>\n

* \u201cEvery casino has its Boardwalk<\/strong>, Park Place<\/strong> and Pennsylvania Avenue<\/strong>. And every casino floor has its Marvin Gardens<\/strong>. This casino was almost all Marvin Gardens, and the areas that were Park Place and Boardwalk were programmed incorrectly,\u201d says Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas<\/strong> President Bill McBeath<\/strong>, using a Monopoly<\/em> metaphor to \"cosmopolitan_las_vegas_terrace_studio_view\"diagnose what was wrong with the $3.9 billion megaresort he inherited. Though he doesn’t come right out and say it, McBeath has essentially reinvented the Cosmo, rectifying mistakes like the placement of its sports book<\/a> (now much closer to the Strip) and segregating high-limit slots from table games. He’s also rolled out two new restaurants and has another pair of eateries waiting in the wings. (My wife and I ate at Beauty & Essex<\/strong> on our anniversary and give its cuisine high marks.)<\/p>\n

Among McBeath’s myriad changes, one of the most important has yet to be made: Choosing a new show for the Rose. Rabbit. Lie<\/strong>. supper club. Having been close to the blast zone\u00a0of bombs Viva Elvis<\/em> and Zarkana<\/em>, McBeath knows the dangers of having two flops in a row and is choosing the successor to Vegas Nocturne<\/em> (a good show that couldn’t find its audience) with the greatest of care. In switching out 135 slots for the race-and-sports book, McBeath also installed 22 video poker units that, believe it or not, outperform their slot predecessors by 100%. But don’t assume that McBeath is one of those executives who look down their noses at the slot player. He tells the Las Vegas Sun<\/em>, “for me it\u2019s like, look, you can\u2019t be the ostrich with your head in the sand, saying, \u2018We don\u2019t care about slots; whatever they do is gravy.\u2019 That\u2019s crazy.\u201d One needn’t take McBeath’s remarks on faith. The consistently profitable performance of the Cosmo on his watch speaks for itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Atlantic City waits to see how long it takes Glenn Straub to get Revel reopened (we’re now at D-Day Plus Twelve and counting), Local 54 of Unite-Here is girding itself for a strike. It’s amassed a war chest and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,66,18,14,4,9,196],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18444,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18443\/revisions\/18444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}