Significant gaps remain between the negotiating parties’ wage and healthcare proposals. Yet the casino strikers may face an even tougher fight than United Auto Workers (UAW), who recently won major concessions from the Detroit Three auto companies.

Around-the-clock picket lines are putting financial pressure on the casinos - not to mention the City of Detroit, which relies heavily on gambling tax revenue. Workers are demanding higher wages, better healthcare and job security. Richardson is one of the thousands of workers who launched the first casino strike in Detroit history, walking off the job at MGM Grand, Hollywood Casino at Greektown and MotorCity Casino Hotel on Oct. Support our mission to address information and accountability gaps in Detroit. People are having knee (and) back surgery because of the toll it takes on our bodies.” “That’s why we’re broke down the way we are,” said Richardson, who switched to stocking minibars for an extra $1 an hour just before the strike. Shifts could easily stretch to 11 or 12 hours of physical labor. She had to get through 12 to 16 rooms a day.

If partying guests left a mess, tough luck she still had the same amount of time to clean it. MGM Grand allowed housekeepers 45 minutes to clean a room with two queen beds or 30 minutes for a room with a single king bed. She worked under time pressure for $17.70 an hour, plus overtime. Ten-hour days of making beds and scrubbing toilets was the new normal, up from her usual eight-hour shift.

Many of her coworkers didn’t return, and the hotel was short-staffed. When the casinos closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, she weathered unemployment only to find that her job had gone from tough to brutal. Kolada Richardson returned to work cleaning hotel rooms at Detroit’s MGM Grand in May 2021 after more than a year off the job.

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