Horseshoe Indianapolis dealers resist repression in 4th week of historic strike for recognition

Shelbyville, IN - The strike for union recognition at the Horseshoe Indianapolis Casino has now entered its fourth week, marking more than 23 days on the picket line for table games dealers and dual rate dealers. These workers, who greet one another each day with the call-and-response “One day longer” and “One day stronger,” are carrying out one of the most significant and courageous private-sector labor battles in modern Indiana history, and one of the only major recognition strikes seen in the United States in decades.

Their struggle is being closely watched across the state and around the country. The dealers and dual rates are fighting to preserve their rights, defend free speech, and win democratic recognition in the face of corporate union-busting, a federal shutdown, and now an unprecedented attempt by the city of Shelbyville to help Caesars Entertainment crush the strike by forcibly removing lawfully picketing workers from public land.

The road to the strike

Dealers and dual rates – workers who deal cards part of the week and serve as floor leads the other part – began organizing with Teamsters Local 135 roughly six months ago. Although Caesars misclassifies dual rates as “supervisors,” they have no authority to hire, fire or discipline; they are workers like everyone else.

By early September, the group had reached super-majority support for forming a union. On September 4, they marched on the boss and demanded voluntary recognition. Caesars refused. Workers then offered a neutral card check. Caesars refused again.

Local 135 filed for an NLRB election, originally proposing September 26. Caesars pushed for October 17. Knowing the company could stall the process even further through hearings, the union accepted the date and location proposed by management.

Immediately afterward, Caesars launched a full-scale union-busting campaign with the notorious law firm Littler Mendelson, known nationwide for helping employers crush organizing drives. Workers were bombarded with captive-audience meetings, threats, surveillance and nonstop anti-union television propaganda. Local 135 filed multiple unfair labor practice charges in response.

The shutdown, the delay and the strike authorization vote

On October 1, the federal government shut down after Congress failed to pass a funding bill. The NLRB ceased elections, including the Horseshoe vote planned for October 17.

Within hours, Local 135 proposed a solution: move forward with the October 17 election using a neutral, licensed third-party election supervisor under the exact rules already agreed to by both sides. Caesars refused to even acknowledge the proposal.

Workers now faced a choice. They could wait months for the NLRB to reopen and expect management to escalate union-busting in the meantime. Or they could revive a tactic that built the American labor movement before 1935: namely, a strike for union recognition.

In mass meetings, workers chose the latter. On October 10, in a secret ballot vote open to all dealers and dual rates, 92% voted to authorize a recognition strike.

October 17: The walkout that shut down table games

At exactly 12:00 noon on October 17, day-shift dealers set alarms on their phones – since casinos have no clocks. When the alarms sounded, they closed their lids, secured their tables, raised their hands, announced the strike, and walked off the casino floor together.

Outside, they were joined by grave and swing shift workers, and more than 100 Teamsters supporters. All entrances were soon covered by 24-hour picket lines. Table games were shut down.

The strike was on.

A powerful strike line – day and night, through rain and cold

From day one, the picket lines have been militant, disciplined and unbroken. Workers marched in formation. They leafleted customers. They carried signs like “Horseshoe Teamsters Hold All the Cards” and “Horseshoe Teamsters on Strike.”

For 23 days straight, they have held the lines in pouring thunderstorms, freezing nights and high winds. On October 18 and 19, storms tore down canopies and destroyed signs. By sunrise, day-shift strikers had rebuilt everything.

Some dealers who did not initially join the strike have come outside on strike since the beginning. One woman noted that management has taken to working the dealers inside excessive hours and refusing to grant “early outs,” or EOs, even in cases of being sick or a child’s birthday.

The strike has also had real economic impact. Customers have turned back in large numbers, vendors have refused to cross, and Horseshoe’s table games operation has been reduced to a fraction of normal capacity. Sysco, UPS, Pepsi and other Teamster-represented vendors have honored the line. Caesars has resorted to unmarked, unrefrigerated box trucks to move food, and even then, workers intercepted and blocked deliveries.

Even as managers from these companies intervened to drive deliveries across the picket line, reports from inside the casino show an increasingly dire situation for the casino, including spoiled chocolate milk and empty vending machines. Escalators, which union technicians refuse to service behind a picket line, remain inoperable.

Recognition strike rattles Caesars and the city

Customer traffic plunged. Halloween, which was on a Friday, was unusually slow owing to the effect of the picket line. Caesars has attempted to lure in scabs from Harrah’s Hoosier Park with $45 per hour pay and $50 gas cards. They also began hosting “banquets” for high-tier customers (Diamond, Seven Star, GM Club) in an attempt to appear unaffected. Many of those elite customers, however, have joined the strike publicly and announced they will boycott Horseshoe until the union is recognized.

Striking workers kept the picket lines militant, loud and visible. No player was able to get into the casino without being talked to by the striking dealers and given a flyer, asking them not to cross. With thundering chants of, “What do we want? Union! When do we want it? Now!” and “If we don’t get it? Shut it down!,” customers either pledged to not cross in the future or complained to their hosts inside about the strike. Both responses help the strike.

Feeling this pressure, Caesars turned to its puppets in the city of Shelbyville. For 20 lawful days, strikers picketed on the public easements along North Michigan Road, land that has been public since the city moved the road in 2007. But on November 5, in a backroom maneuver, the city suddenly declared nearly all land beside the curb to be private Caesars property – even though the casino does not maintain, plow, pave, or own the roadway and cannot legally “own” public right-of-way.

Shelbyville police, standing shoulder to shoulder with casino security and management, attempted to forcibly evict the strikers from their lawful picket areas.

Teamsters Local 135 President Dustin Roach and Dairy Teamster Brody Kanouse refused to retreat, in an act of civil disobedience. Police sought trespass warrants, but a judge declined, noting that officers could not prove the workers were not on public easement. Workers stood on the public land across the street, chanting “Shame!” as officers and managers ripped apart their tents and canopies, which were erected on a public easement to withstand the cold and the rain.

Dealers fight back: Legal action, political pressure and escalation

That night, over 100 striking workers and supporters flooded the Shelbyville city council meeting, the largest turnout in decades. Workers demanded that the city stop acting as an arm of Caesars Entertainment and defend working families instead of corporate power.

On November 6, Local 135 filed a federal lawsuit seeking an injunction against the city of Shelbyville and the Shelbyville Police Department for violating workers’ First Amendment rights, their NLRA-protected right to picket, and the protections guaranteed by the Indiana Constitution.

On November 7, a federal judge ordered the city to respond by Monday at noon, with union rebuttal due at 4 p.m. A ruling is expected shortly thereafter. The union is demanding full injunctive relief to restore strikers’ rights to picket on long-established public easements.

Meanwhile, strikers continue holding the line from a smaller section of confirmed public land across the road – complete with Scabby the Rat towering over the entrance for anyone who chooses to cross.

The significance of the recognition strike

Recognition strikes were once common before the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, but today, they are almost unheard of. Very few private-sector unions have struck for recognition in a generation. The Horseshoe Indianapolis dealers and dual rates are doing what workers did in the 1910s, 1920s and early 1930s: using the strike itself as the democratic mechanism to win a union when the legal process has been weaponized against them.

Their decision to strike has already changed the political landscape in Shelbyville and forced national attention onto Caesars’ conduct. Workers say they will continue the strike “one day longer, one day stronger” until Horseshoe recognizes the union and respects their right to collectively bargain a decent contract.

Whether the judge grants the injunction or not, the workers remain resolute in the fight to break management and have the union they formed recognized.

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Source: https://fightbacknews.org/horseshoe-indianapolis-dealers-resist-repression-in-4th-week-of-historic-strike?pk_campaign=rss-feed