Key Takeaways
- Two casino strike settlements were ratified in the same week. More than 1,300 workers at Encore Boston Harbor in Everett, Massachusetts, in UNITE HERE Local 26 and Teamsters Local 25, approved a five-and-a-half-year agreement on 5 November 2026, ending a walkout that began on 4 September. Just over 900 Unifor Local 1090 members at Great Canadian Entertainment’s Casino Ajax and Pickering Casino in Ontario approved a four-year deal worth 14% in total.
- The Encore casino strike settlement came after a revenue fall that reached well beyond the departments which walked out. Massachusetts Gaming Commission figures put Encore’s September 2026 slot and table gross gaming revenue at $46.06m against $59.13m a year earlier, down 22.1%, with table revenue down 19.8% even though dealers were in neither striking local.
- Massachusetts collected $11.52m of its 25% share of Encore’s September gaming revenue against $14.78m in September 2025, so the state took $3.27m less in one month. Wynn Resorts chief executive Craig Billings called the strike a modest headwind on the Q3 2026 earnings call.
What do the two casino strike settlements commit the operators to?
They commit the two operators to very different amounts of time. The Encore agreement runs five and a half years, so the next negotiation at the property falls in 2032 rather than 2029. Great Canadian signed four years in Ontario, with total wage increases of 14% across the agreement and lump sums on ratification of $300 for full-time staff and $150 for part-time staff.
The two unions were not equally forthcoming, either. Teamsters Local 25 described significant wage increases, enhanced benefits and improved working conditions without a number attached to any of them, and neither local released the ratification count, so the term is the only hard figure out of Everett. Unifor published the lot: 84.7% in favour on an 82% turnout, extra leave days, protected freedom to swap shifts, and a provision that picket-line time does not cost part-time members their eligibility for health, dental and life insurance.
Casino workforces carry a lot of part-time staff, so that last provision is worth more than it reads. An employer that lets nine weeks on a picket line break a part-timer’s benefit qualification has bought itself a second dispute for the morning everybody returns.
What did the Encore casino strike cost in revenue and state tax?
It cost roughly $13.07m of gaming revenue in September alone, and that comes off the regulator’s published file rather than the company’s account of it. The Massachusetts Gaming Commission records Encore’s September 2026 slot and table gross gaming revenue at $46,064,208.77, of which $26.92m came from slots and $19.15m from tables, against $59,130,761.30 in the same month a year earlier. Slots were down 23.6% and tables down 19.8%.
Dealers were not on strike, and table games still lost close to a fifth of their revenue. The two locals covered housekeepers, cooks, servers, bartenders, slot attendants, drivers, valet, cage cashiers, dispatch, warehouse and guest experience staff, so the tables were staffed from the first day of the walkout to the last. What changed around them was that valet parking shut, the free water shuttle stopped running and several restaurants closed, while the unions ran a public boycott.
The loss was therefore never contained to the departments that withdrew their labour, and no model built on the payroll of the unit able to walk would have found it. The state’s take moved with the revenue, from $14,782,690.33 to $11,516,052.19 at the 25% rate Massachusetts applies to Encore.
What should an operator build before its own agreements expire?
It should build a bargaining unit register, and build it before the next expiry date rather than after the first ballot. A casino strike settlement ends the dispute in front of the operator and says nothing about what the next one will cost, while the Encore figures show that the real exposure is the revenue depending on a unit rather than the payroll inside it.
Great Canadian is the argument for doing this early, since a casino labour dispute inside a multi-property estate rarely arrives on its own. Two of its disputes closed in the same week and a third did not, because security officers at Great Canadian Casino Resort Toronto, formerly Casino Woodbine, have been locked out since 23 July 2026 and Unifor was still chasing their contract on 6 November. That is one estate carrying three bargaining situations at once, and the third of them is now past its fifteenth week.
- Every bargaining unit across the estate on one page, with its union and local, its headcount and the exact expiry date of its agreement, so two expiries falling in the same quarter are visible while there is still time to move one of them.
- A revenue dependency rating for each unit, tested against the regulator’s published monthly revenue for that property rather than against internal payroll, since the published figure is the one the board will be asked about.
- The amenities each unit runs, with a decided answer on which close and which are covered during a stoppage, including the ones that bring people through the door rather than take money at it.
- The benefit continuity position for part-time staff during a stoppage, settled internally before it arrives as a bargaining demand.
Boardroom Questions
Five questions to put to the board while both casino strike settlements are still fresh.
- What is the exact expiry date of every collective agreement across our estate, and do any of them fall in the same quarter?
- For each bargaining unit, which revenue lines stop, degrade or close if that unit withdraws labour, and what is the daily value of each one?
- Encore lost 19.8% of its table revenue in a month when its dealers were at work. Which of our revenue lines would move for reasons other than unstaffed positions, and has anyone modelled that?
- Do our part-time staff keep their benefit eligibility through a work stoppage, and if not, what would conceding it cost us against what refusing it has cost Great Canadian since July?
- Are we trying to buy years, as Wynn did at five and a half, or price, as Great Canadian did at four years and 14%, and which of the two does our cost base actually need?
Sources
(1) International Brotherhood of Teamsters, “Casino Teamsters Win Strike at Encore Boston Harbor”, 6 November 2026, also issued through PR Newswire. Source for the five-and-a-half-year agreement, “more than 1,300 workers”, the Teamsters Local 25 unit of 211 members in the warehouse, horticulture, call centre, cage cashier, limousine, dispatch, traffic, valet and guest experience departments, and the description of significant wage increases, enhanced benefits and improved working conditions. The release says 62 days on the picket line, and Boston.com reports 63, which is the difference between subtracting the dates and counting both of them.
(2) Boston.com, “Encore Boston Harbor employees ratify contract, ending 63-day strike”, 8 November 2026. Source for the 31 August 2026 contract expiry, the 4 September strike start, ratification on Thursday 5 November, the return to work on the morning of Friday 6 November (attributed to The Boston Globe), and the closure during the strike of valet parking, the free water shuttle and several restaurants.
(3) Massachusetts Gaming Commission, monthly casino revenue report for Encore Boston Harbor, September 2026 file updated 20 October 2026. Slot gross gaming revenue $26,917,579.99 and table gross gaming revenue $19,146,628.78, total $46,064,208.77, taxes collected at 25% of $11,516,052.19. September 2025 comparatives of $35,253,249.01, $23,877,512.29, $59,130,761.30 and $14,782,690.33. The percentage changes in this piece are calculated from those figures, which the Commission does not publish as percentages. The October 2026 file had not been published as of 10 November 2026.
(4) CDC Gaming, “Encore Boston Harbor union employees ratify new contract”, 6 November 2026. Source for the job categories covered by the two locals, for Wynn Resorts chief executive Craig Billings describing the strike on the Q3 2026 earnings call as “a modest headwind”, and for Encore’s $50.1m of adjusted property EBITDAR in the quarter. These are CDC Gaming’s report of the earnings call rather than quotations from a Wynn document.
(5) Wynn Resorts Limited, Q3 2026 earnings release filed as Exhibit 99.1 to a Form 8-K, and Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended 30 September 2026, both filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 5 November 2026 (EDGAR accession numbers 0001174922-26-000078 and 0001174922-26-000079). Located through EDGAR full-text search. The filings themselves could not be retrieved for this piece, so no figure above is quoted from them.
(6) WCVB, “Encore employee unions announce new contract, ending monthslong strike”, updated 5 November 2026. Source for the Wynn Resorts statement that it was “pleased to have reached an agreement that works for our employees and the long-term future of Encore Boston Harbor”, and for the union list of pay, benefits, job security, healthcare funding and pension as the issues in dispute.
(7) Unifor, “Casino Ajax and Pickering Casino workers set to return to work following contract ratification”, 6 November 2026, modified 7 November 2026. Source for Unifor Local 1090, just over 900 members, Great Canadian Entertainment as operator, the four-year agreement, 84.7% in favour on an 82% turnout, total wage increases of 14%, lump sums of $300 full-time and $150 part-time, the compressed vacation grid, the additional leave days, the protected shift change freedom, the protection of part-time benefit eligibility for picket-line time, the return to work on Monday 9 November 2026, and the lockout of security officers at Great Canadian Casino Resort Toronto, formerly Casino Woodbine, since 23 July 2026. The CNW wire version of the same release was read as giving 87.4% in favour; the figure used above is the 84.7% published on Unifor’s own site.
(8) CBC News, carried by Yahoo News Canada, “Ajax, Pickering casino workers back to work after ratifying new collective agreement with employer”, 9 November 2026. Source for the strike beginning at the end of July 2026, for Unifor Local 1090 president Greg Weaver on Pickering and Ajax pay against other Greater Toronto Area casinos run by the same company, and for the statement from Michael Kim, executive vice president of GTA operations at Great Canadian Entertainment. No source read for this piece gives the exact start date of the Ajax and Pickering strike.
(9) The Gaming Boardroom, “Encore Boston Harbor strike: casino staffing rules under test”, 29 September 2026, the earlier State of Play written while the dispute was running.