Gerry Scoppettuolo, October 29, 2026, https://fighting-words.net/
Everett, MA — The display of power of the UNITE HERE Local 26 / Teamster Local 25 (Teamsters Boston) rally and picket line of the Encore Casino in Boston, Massachusetts October 24 was overwhelming. The strike of 1,400 workers now picketing around the clock for seven weeks has not shown any signs of letting up.
The clamor of deafening drum beats and the loud chanting of over 1,000 Latinx, Black, Asian and white workers on the picket line was relentless during the monster rally October 24. Over twenty unions sent members from across the state and New England who showed up in solidarity and were joined by hundreds who came in from New York and Connecticut on five buses. UNITE HERE International President, Gwen Mills, caught the temper of the strikers as she addressed them from a flatbed truck: “Are we ready to bring this home? It is my honor to stand here among these courageous strikers, from Local 26/Teamsters Local 25. We need our wage standard, we need our benefits guaranteed. And we need our job security.”
UNITE HERE represents three hundred thousand workers in the United States including 60,000 in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada including two other Wynn casinos, as well as MGM Resorts Properties and dozens of other casinos .
Technology vs the Working Class
There are over 2,186 gambling casinos in the U.S. with an annual revenue of $76 billion. However, according to the American Gaming Association, in some states online casino betting has well surpassed the kind of old-fashioned hands-on betting that only happened inside brick-and-mortar casinos like Encore. This competition has reduced the profits of Encore which is now trying to bust the union. This problem is compounded by the actions of the state acting on behalf of the billionaire capitalist ruling class which also is competing for workers gambling money in this fleecing by another name.
Revenue of the Massachusetts State Lottery increased 15.1 percent over the last year which collected $5.9 billion in FY 26 a big sum of money that did not get gambled away anywhere else, including Encore. 78 percent of this money was used to fund local aid budgets across the state constituting, if you will, a “voluntary” tax rate of 22 percent on the working class. These monies come directly out of workers’ take-home wages. Every bed made, every meal cooked and served and every room cleaned has a dollar value reckoned as profits in business accounting. It has been well established that these profits do not fall from the sky but are directly taken from that part of casino revenue created by workers for which they are not paid. This value, expressed in wages, is created by workers during that part of the workday after all business expenses have been accounted for but during hours that they must stay working on the clock. This was the entire basis for the struggle for the eight- hour day in the 19th century.
The first unions recognized that factory workers were not compensated for work performed for the two extra hours they worked in the era of the ten-hour day and that shortening the workday would recognize that the true value of their human labor was earned in eight hours and that “extra labor” created value that belonged to workers and not factory owners (Marx’s Labor Theory of Value). The response of the factory owners was the speedup, the division of labor and introduction of more capital so as to extract the same amount of product in a shorter period of time than before or with fewer workers. This is the capitalist AI fever dream.
The Encore strike is a naked class struggle and not just a jousting match for a small part of the profits that the union can negotiate at the bargaining table. Union strike benefits, let us not forget, are provided by workers as part of dues and only partially replace union wages. As inflation increases, due to the U.S. war on Iran, so drops the real purchasing power of those wages and benefits.
As Wobbly union leader Big Bill Haywood declared during the Bread and Roses textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912, “every penny in profits belongs in the pocket of the worker.” If, as most serious political scientists predict, a global recession or depression accompanied by out-of-control inflation develops in a few months, a new set of mass protests may set the stage for bread riots and rebellions. These are necessary pre-conditions for wide-scale permanent change internationally.
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