Playing Against the House: The Dramatic World of an Undercover Union Organizer

by James D. Walsh

Overview

In the tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich’s classic Nickel and Dimed, a talented young journalist goes undercover as a casino labor-union organizer in this rare inside look at the ongoing struggle of hourly-wage service workers to survive in America.

“Salting” is a simple concept—get hired at a non-union company, do the job you were hired to do, and, with the help of organizers on the outside, unionize your coworkers from the inside. James Walsh spent two years as a “salt” in two casinos in South Florida, working as a buffet server and a bartender. Neither his employers nor the union knew of Walsh’s intentions to write about his experience. Now he reveals hard-won and little-known truths about how unions fight to organize service workers, the vigorous corporate opposition against them, and how workers get caught in the middle.

As a salt, Walsh witnessed the cultish nature of labor organization and was constantly grilled by his union organizer as to whether he had enough grit and determination to win converts to the cause while remaining undercover. At work, Walsh witnessed the oddities of casino life and management’s stunning mistreatment of service industry employees, most of whom were hanging on to economic survival by their fingernails. His meticulous reporting reveals supervisors berating workers for the smallest infractions, even as employees submit to relentless scrutiny, ever-changing work schedules, and the callous behavior of casino customers.

A clear-eyed and balanced account, Playing Against the House explores the trials of day-to-day life for the working poor and the face of twenty-first-century union organizing and union busting in unprecedented detail.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476778372
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	02/16/2016
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

James Walsh’s work has appeared on the websites of The New Yorker, Esquire, and GlobalPost. He is on the editorial staff at New York magazine. Playing Against the House is his first book.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Getting In 1

Part 2 The Horse Track Campaign 43

Part 3 The Dog Track Campaign 131

Part 4 The Trial 195

Part 5 The Wait 237

Acknowledgments 259

Index 261

Editorial Reviews

01/04/2016
In his debut book, Walsh tells a personal story of low-wage workers struggling to stay afloat in service industry jobs where substantial tips are rare, hours are long, and employment is precarious. Walsh reports on his near three-year-long stint as a "salt," a union activist who joins a workforce to covertly organize it, while working as a bartender and buffet server in two South Florida casinos, Calder and Mardi Gras. With a balanced perspective and sharp eye, he reveals the tactics managers use to keep employees from unionizing. The book sketches in the history and politics of Florida's multibillion dollar casino industry, which is reliant on slot machines. It also examines casino culture, showing how Walsh's black coworkers were treated differently from white ones by both employers and customers. In an informative and gripping narrative, Walsh moves from the tactics of covert union organizing to the court case that will determine whether Mardi Gras employees who were fired for unionizing will regain their jobs. Walsh gives an insider's view of the gaming industry, placing the stories and struggles of his coworkers at the heart of this must-read book. Agent: David Black, David Black Agency. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"The degreeof commitment shown by this young author is stunning. James Walsh used his two years in low wage jobs to help bring a union fight to casino owners and, now, an original, first-hand account to readers. It's an up-close, empathetic portrait of the working poor, in particular the bravest among them, and what happens when idealism meets the sausage-making of union organizing." —Ted Conover, author of Rolling Nowhere and Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing

“James Walsh’s Playing Against the House is a brilliantly conceived and executed undercover expose about union rights at casinos. Set in South Florida, the narrative is full of compassion for the hard-working poor. Every page sizzles. This is New Journalism at its finest!” —Douglas Brinkley, author of Cronkite

“James Walsh has done a remarkable thing here. He has told a story of 21st-century union organizing, not through statistics and received wisdom, but through riveting, accessible first-person reporting. He humanizes the issue, deftly rendering everyone involved—from workers to management—and in the process, has created a necessary text that also happens to be a page-turner.” —Dave Eggers, cofounder of Voice of Witness and author of The Circle and A Hologram for The King

“With a balanced perspective and sharp eye, he reveals the tactics managers use to keep employees from unionizing. The book sketches in the history and politics of Florida's multibillion dollar casino industry, which is reliant on slot machines. It also examines casino culture, showing how Walsh's black coworkers were treated differently from white ones by both employers and customers. In an informative and gripping narrative, Walsh moves from the tactics of covert union organizing to the court case that will determine whether Mardi Gras employees who were fired for unionizing will regain their jobs. Walsh gives an insider's view of the gaming industry, placing the stories and struggles of his coworkers at the heart of this must-read book.”—Publishers Weekly

“Walsh does an engagingly readable job of humanizing the labor battle, showing just how much power the corporations wield and how long they can wait.”—Kirkus

From the Publisher

2015-12-21
A journalist navigates ethically tricky terrain as he helps attempt to organize union representation in Miami casinos. In his first book, New York magazine staffer Walsh undertakes a major challenge: to work as what the labor movement calls " ‘salts,' union activists who got jobs in non-union workplaces, intent on organizing them from the inside." There is nothing illegal about salting, though employers resistant to unions are adamantly opposed to such activity and might terminate the employment of someone engaging in it, particularly during a probationary period when it would be easy to invent some other excuse. So the author necessarily kept his recruitment a secret from those who hired him, as he surreptitiously attempted to find other workers who might be suitable for union leadership at the casino. However, he also kept his intention to write about his experience a secret from the union activists who had recruited him and who subsequently tried to prevent him from writing about such union organizing from the inside out. "So you were salting the salts?" asked his activist supervisor, who felt betrayed—though Walsh's sympathy throughout this narrative is with the unions that face such a difficult challenge recruiting the diverse population of minimum-wage service workers, many of them immigrants. Some of them agreed to enlist in the union effort, and some of them lost their jobs because of it, as the author did, though the risk and cost to him were a whole lot less than to those with bigger obligations and fewer options. The legal system would ultimately rule in favor of "The Mardi Gras Ten," with some—though not Walsh—given their jobs back with back pay. The author does an engagingly readable job of humanizing the labor battle, showing just how much power the corporations wield and how long they can wait. Walsh knows he's operating in "a gray area of journalistic ethics," and readers can decide whether he emerges on the right side.

Kirkus Reviews