New Delhi, June 10 -- The woman who cleans your hotel room at the Hard Rock does not yet know what her contract will say in twelve months. That uncertainty, shared by roughly 10,000 casino workers across Atlantic City, is now baked into the agreements themselves.

their identities not yet disclosed by the union - remain in active negotiations.

That the deals are one-year agreements at all is the news. In every major round of Atlantic City casino labor negotiations in recent memory, Local 54 has secured multi-year contracts - the most recent prior cycle produced four-year deals. A deliberate retreat to a single year signals something the carefully worded press statements do not quite say: both the casinos and the workers believe the marke...