Labor unions backing Maryland's slots referendum

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Maryland’s labor unions are strongly backing approval for the slot machine referendum on the November ballot, they announced Friday. They said it represents a chance to bolster finances for education and other important programs they support and an opportunity to create good union jobs at the slots locations.

“Passage of the slots referendum will be a fiscal win for the state of Maryland,” said Fred Mason, president of the Maryland and DC AFL-CIO. He said the political committee “will be mobilizing our members,” which includes 300,000 members in 500 unions. One in four households in Maryland has a union worker, he said. “They understand that much revenue is going to neighboring states.”

The union leaders rejected the assertion of slots opponents that the gambling would be a tax on the workers who cannot afford to play the machines.

“We know these same people are getting on buses and going to Atlantic City” and other states to play, said Ernie Grecco, president of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council of the AFL-CIO. “We ought to allow them to do it Maryland.”

The slots legislation includes financial aid for the ailing horse racing industry, and “Pimlico and Laurel are wall-to-wall union facilities,” Grecco said.

The legislation includes “a labor peace agreement” requiring the owner of slots licenses to cooperate with unions attempting to organize their workers. The workers in turn are restricted from taking any job actions that would interrupt the flow of slot revenues to the state.

“We worked very closely with the legislature to get this labor peace clause,” said Charly Carter, political director of Unite Here, the union representing many of Pimlico’s employees. “It gives them a good chance to be middle class jobs,” rather than minimum wage jobs, she said.

At least one union official wasn’t supporting the labor endorsement. Charles Graham, chair of Marylanders United to Stop Slots and business director of an electrical workers local, said in an e-mail, “Slots won’t lower taxes or create good jobs; they will only make our tough economic times worse through increased crime, broken homes, addiction, corruption, bankruptcies and foreclosures.”

llazarick@baltimoreexaminer.com

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