Union workers at Pimlico Race Course avert strike prior to Preakness by ratifying contract with pay

[TexasTowelie]

Union workers at Pimlico Race Course avert strike prior to Preakness by ratifying contract with pay raise


With days left before the horseracing world turns its eyes on Pimlico Race Course for the Preakness Stakes weekend, employees at the Baltimore track averted a threatened strike by approving a contract with the Maryland Jockey Club that provides their first pay raise in more than a decade.

About 90% of the members of United Food & Commercial Workers Local 27 voted to ratify a labor agreement with the Jockey Club that will increase pay for the next two years and provide retroactive raises dating to Jan. 1, 2018 — when the previous contract expired, union officials said.

“The new agreement, reached as Preakness weekend approaches, implements higher wages, better healthcare coverage and other new benefits for union employees,” said Jason Chorpenning, UFCW Local 27 president, in an email. “UFCW Local 27 remains committed to thoroughbred racing, including important events like the Preakness and Maryland Million Day, and to the employees at Pimlico and Laurel who make those events possible.”

Chorpenning credited the “tenacity of the union membership for this success” and thanked the Jockey Club for the agreement.

Read more: https://www.capitalgazette.com/bs-md-pimlico-union-contract-20190514-story.html

[elleng]

1. first pay raise in more than a decade.