Indiana casino workers ratify contracts

GARY -- Hospitality workers at Trump and Majestic Star casinos have voted to ratify a settlement that averted a threatened strike at four of Indiana's Lake Michigan riverboats.\nMembers of the union representing nearly 700 housekeepers, servers, cooks and bartenders at three of the casinos have the new contracts while workers at Michigan City's Blue Chip were expected to do so on Wednesday, a union spokeswoman said.\nNinety-two percent of the union members at Trump and 78 percent at Majestic Star employees voted in favor of the deal Monday, said Clare Fauke, a spokeswoman for Chicago-based Unite Here Local 1.\nUnion workers at Harrah's in East Chicago approved the contract last week.\nThe union has been pushing for improved wages and health insurance and had threatened to strike this month if progress was not made in negotiations to replace its expired contracts.\nFauke said the separate agreements were similar and included improved health benefits. She said the union would release details of the contracts following the vote by Blue Chip workers.\nNorthwestern Indiana's riverboat, Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, is not unionized.\nA study last year by an IU-Northwest professor found that 24 percent of the workers at riverboat and hotel complexes said they had enrolled their children in a state health care subsidy program and another 17 percent had no health-care coverage for their children.