The union also fought for job protection against artificial intelligence. When potentially job-altering technology is introduced, the union must receive six months advance notice.
“Because AI learns and if it’s introduced now but there’s no effect and later on that introduction causes an effect that can eliminate jobs and our language kicks in,” Pappageorge said.
The language states the workers must be offered training to learn the new technology or potentially retrain for another position, or receive a severance package.
“We got an increase in money, $2,000 per year for every year you’ve worked, if your job was eliminated by technology.”
There are still two dozen smaller casinos and companies where worker contracts expired earlier this summer.
“We’ve already done round one of negotiations with those companies while we were in negotiations with the Big 3. And uh, we’ll give these companies the opportunity to do the right thing. We’ll see who wants to go first and we’ll start negotiating.”