Atlantic City Casinos, Unite HERE Union Agree to One-Year Deal

^{All nine of Atlantic City's casinos, including Bally's, seen above, have reached new one-year labor agreements with UNITE HERE Local 54. (Photo: Mira / Alamy)}

UNITE HERE Local 54, the union that represents more Atlantic City casino workers than any other, has completed efforts to come to an agreement with all nine casino resorts in the city.

After having reached deals with six of the casinos by early June 2026, UNITE HERE announced that its final agreement with Bally’s Atlantic City was reached last week.

Casino Expansion Threatens Atlantic City Economy

In all cases, the agreements between the union and the casinos are for just one year, a notably shorter period than the deals stemming from the last round of labor negotiations at Atlantic City casinos, which took place in 2022.

The labor deals will ensure short-term stability for the Atlantic City market while stakeholders watch the growing NYC casino market. That includes both the existing Resorts World New York City resort in Queens and the two additional casinos coming to the city (Metropolitan Park and Bally’s Bronx), as well as a possible casino expansion in northern New Jersey.

In the meantime, leaders praised the comprehensive agreements reached across the city’s resorts.

“We are proud of our negotiating committee, our members, and our staff who stood up and fought to maintain and improve the contractual pay, benefit and employment standards that make these jobs good union jobs,” Local 54 President Donna DeCaprio said in a statement.

The final agreements came just days after the Atlantic County Economic Alliance (ACEA) released a new report on Atlantic City's economic outlook for the next decade. Recognized threats include online gambling (which brings in revenue but creates few jobs), the coming casinos, economic uncertainty, and the possibility of northern New Jersey expansion. 

According to the ACEA report, between 1,500 and more than 8,000 jobs could be under threat in Atlantic County, depending on how these factors play out over the next decade.

Smoking, Economics Could Cloud Future Negotiations

While exactly how gaming expansion and other factors are impacting the Atlantic City casinos won’t be entirely clear for many more years, one more year of data from Resorts World New York City and the growing online gaming industry might give both labor unions and casino management a better baseline to work from for future negotiations. 

Economic issues aren’t the only ones that could influence future, longer-term negotiations. Atlantic City workers have been seeking legal or legislative avenues to remove the casinos’ exemptions from New Jersey’s Smoke-Free Air Act, which currently allows the resorts to maintain smoking areas on their casino floors. 

The group Casino Employees Against Smoking Effects (CEASE) has even tied these two issues together, arguing that going smoke-free could make Atlantic City casinos more attractive to many visitors. Earlier this year, a court ruling on the casino smoking exemption found that the original trial judge made multiple errors when dismissing the suit.