Casino workers maintained a picket line outside Woodbine Casino Tuesday after being locked out by the casino’s owners, Great Canadian Entertainment.
The lockout began at immediately after midnight on Monday, though the casino remains open to customers.
Nine hundred forty-five members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada are locked out. PSAC Local 533 president Theo Lagakos said approximately half are full-time, and half are part-time.
Great Canadian said in a statement that PSAC members voted against the offer despite their bargaining committee’s endorsement of a tentative agreement.
“Subsequently, we continued discussions with PSAC into late Sunday evening and offered further improvements, which were not taken to their membership,” the statement said.
Lagakos disputes the claim further improvements were offered.
“Overall, they did not add anything. They were just cutting and pasting things and rearranging things,” he said.
Lagakos said if the employer “truly believed” it was a good deal, the option remains to take it directly to the membership.
Great Canadian’s statement said the offer included a “16% increase in wages over four years, market adjustments in wages for certain roles, a signing bonus of $1,000 for full time team members and $500 for part time team members, as well as significant improvements in benefits.”
But from Lagako’s perspective, the central sticking point in the dispute is over guaranteed hours for part time staff.
“They want you to be available 24/7 around the clock,” he said. “Even if you’ve been a part-time employee for 20 years, or 15 years, or 10 years, they want you to be available, but they don’t want to give you – not even three days a week,” he said.
“I don’t understand how a company that makes between five and nine million a day apparently can’t afford to do this,” he said.
Zilma Ross-Latouche has worked at Woodbine for 17 years. She worked full time for 15 years but then had her hours cut to part time as a result of the pandemic.
She said raises were needed to keep up with inflation.
“It’s not unfair what they [workers] are asking because the cost of living has gone way up,” she said. “We are still in a lower bracket, you know, everything is very expensive now,” Ross-Latouche said.
She said Woodbine workers wanted to return to work.
“We need to go back to work, but they need to come to the table and see what they can do to help us,” she said.
Lagakos said that when the city greenlit the expansion of Woodbine, a deal was made with the Toronto Community Benefits Network for good paying jobs in Rexdale.
“I think the people of Rexdale – and they’ve lived in the community for 30 years, where Humber is located as well – deserve to have good paying jobs, not casual work, not work that’s close to the minimum wage,” he said.
Great Canadian Entertainment maintains the 16% increase it offered workers is higher than the 12.6% recently obtained by PSAC for striking federal government workers.