"This piece is quite misleading. In as much as my schedule with other obligations has pretty much ended my WSOp dealing (I may get to deal some more but not much) I feel a little more free to discuss the situation.
1) The issue is not that the witholding of taxes. All of the Dealers realize this had more to do with the IRS than Harrah's.
The reason the dealers have been unhappy is that we have been consistently lied to and treated with pettiness.
1) We were told that our our base pay would be paid bi-weekly on the regular RIO pay schedule which is every other Thursday with checks available for pickup at 12:01AM on Thursday.
2) We were told that out Tokes would be based on a week ending on each Tuesday with that weeks check available to us on that Thursday (2 days later) at 12:01AM.
3) The first day of the WSOP was Sunday June 25th. As such we should have recieved a check for Tokes rebcived from 6/25 through Tues 6/27 on Thursday the 29th. On Thursday the 29th we were not paid and we were not offered any explanation. By the next day we were being told that payroll couldn't get the checks together that fast we would recieve that money in our chck the next week.
4) The next Thursday 7/6 we arrived for work in the morning to find that we had no checks. Things were getting tense and there was no question that things could blow. We were told that the payroll department had dropped the ball in the lap of Phil Miller at the last minute and that he was working on getting us checks. Most of us were pretty close to walking, and there were dealers who were close to violence. We were next told that our checks would be available at 5PM. Then after we went upstairs to work based on that representation we were told that the checks would not be available until Saturday. believe that some dealers made e fully appropriate threats of violence and remarkably our checks were available for us at 5PM.
5) When we received our checks the stubs did not list how many hours we had worked or what the hourly toke rate was. there was simply a gross number a list of deductions and a a net figure. Since they listed neither an hourly rate or the number of hours we had no way of telling if we were paid for the proper amount of time. It turns out that rather than pay us for our toke from 6/25 through 7/4 as we were supposed to be paid they had simply paid us for the period from 6/25 through 6/29.
The next morning we were met by the many suits at the dealers meeting and it was ugly. First off the suits couldn't keep their lies straight.hey even denied the excuses they had given us the week before. Phil Miller had no idea what we were talking about when we mentioned the payroll having been dropped in his lap at the last minute. We also had a problem with the actual toke rate. Virtually every dealer there belives that Harrah's has stolen from us.
Harrah's has not explained this:
1) The total size of the event and the prize pools is larger than last year.
2) This year the dealers are supposed to be recieving a larger share (while less is being taken for the "staff" we no longer have to share with the Floor so our share was actually supposed to be slighly higher than last year.
3) If the total prize pool is bigger, and our share of the prize pool is bigger then the average dealer should be making more this year than last, the experienced WSOP dealers are telling me then are on pace to make 50% of what they did last year (gross figures so the tax issue is not the point)
4) Many dealers are reporting instances of of management and/or other personal rerouting money intended as a dealer tip into other pockets. As far as I can tell there has been no investigation by Harrah's of these allegations.
5)it is traditional in pooled toke situations that the dealers select dealers to be a toke committee to oversee the collection and distribution of the tokes. We have not been permitted to have people of our choosing involved in the process (Why?) Instead we are told that "A dealer" hand selected by Harrah's management watches as the toke boxes are collected. BTW the dealer toke boxes are fastened to the tables with velcro, interestingly enough the box with Harrah's money can not be removed without a key. it wasn't until the near dealer walkout that they even started giving us numbers to calculate a toke rate, we were simply required to trust them.
plus there is a bunch of other stuff about how we were treated like not gettiung schedules until the last minute, being thrown out of the employee parking lot for no reason"
