Independent, The (London): Rien ne va plus: casinos face jackpot night strike by croupiers

CROUPIERS AND other workers in France's booming casino industry are threatening to go on strike tonight - traditionally a jackpot night - unless their wages and working conditions are improved.

Negotiations were under way yesterday to avert the strike but scores of the 188 casinos in France, including some of the largest ones, seemed likely to be closed or disrupted. Behind the unrest, there lies a profound social and cultural change in the nature of casinos in France during the past 16 years.

The received image of the French casino is a white-stuccoed building on the Riviera, resembling an enchanted palace from The Arabian Nights, in which supermodel lookalikes and James Bond wannabes look on while a croupier warns: "Rien ne va plus!" [no more bets] before setting a small ball tinkling in a roulette wheel.

The truth is more prosaic and depressing. The glamorous outsides of the casinos remain the same but the nature of the business, and the customers, has been transformed since machine a sous, or one- armed bandits, were first permitted in 1988.

The typical casino customer is now middle-aged or older and from the lower middle class - men with woollen caps with a little button on top; women in olive-green anoraks with fake-fur collars. They go to the casino, not to play roulette or blackjack but to feed fruit machines.

The turnover of casino gambling in France has increased ten-fold since 1988 but the income of croupiers, and other casino employees, has collapsed in real terms. Much of their earnings used to come from tips from the big spenders at the gaming tables but the turnover of the traditional casino games has been in steady decline.

More than 90 per cent of the French casino business is now provided by the people who feed euros into fruit machines but do not hand out many tips.

Unions representing the 17,000 casino workers, croupiers as well as fruit- machine attendants and bar and restaurant staff, are demanding a 4 per cent increase in basic salaries and bonuses and extra rest days for night work.

The casino owners have offered 4 per cent for the lowest paid, 3 per cent for the rest and no night bonuses. Constant late night work disrupts workers socially but is not rewarded because the employers argue that night work in casinos is normal, not exceptional.

The casino workers say they are determined to avoid confrontation and violence. They will picket casinos, but will not try to prevent punters from entering.

Pierre Criscolo, 46, a croupier, and union representative for the Force Ouvriere at the Ruhl casino in Nice, said that the key demand was not the basic wage increase but the bonuses for night work.

"The bosses say, `but you've always worked at nights'," he said. "That's true but it's time that they recognised it at last."

Casino workers now want a fair share of the proceeds from gaming machines.

France's largest casino, at Enghien-les-Bains, made EUR137m (pounds 75m) profit in the 2003-4 season - a 17 per cent increase on the figures from the previous year.