Summer on horizon, but no sunny outlook in A.C.

ATLANTIC CITY -

The crucial summer season will start with three Atlantic City casinos in bankruptcy and one beset by regular pickets and protests.

And things won't be much easier for former casinos, either. Revel is struggling to reopen, and the Showboat is mired in a legal battle over whether it can be converted into a college campus.

Union members picketed yesterday evening outside the Trump Taj Mahal, in their seventh protest against the casino or soon-to-be-owner Carl Icahn over health insurance and pension benefits canceled by a bankruptcy judge last fall.

"This is just kicking off the fighting season," said Bob McDevitt, president of Local 54 of the Unite-HERE casino workers union. "We are going to stir the pot, big-time."

Several hundred workers marched in a steady rain outside the casino, some holding signs critical of Icahn and demanding the restoration of their benefits. A few banged drums and one loudly blew on a plastic horn.

Summer is when the casinos make most of their money. Coming off a dreadful 2014 that saw four of Atlantic City's 12 casinos close, the remaining eight are looking to do better this summer. Monthly revenue reports show many have been gaining market share in a diminished market, but for that to continue, summer 2015 is going to have to be a bang-up season.

But the first thing some customers will see when they arrive in the city are the words "Boycott Taj" and "Boycott Trop" on the facades of casinos, shined there by union members using a light projector.

Icahn, the billionaire investor who also owns Atlantic City's Tropicana Casino and Resort, is in the process of acquiring the Taj Mahal through bankruptcy court. He has provided money to keep the struggling casino afloat but insists the benefit cuts and work-rule changes that current owner Trump Entertainment Resorts imposed are essential to the casino's long-term survival.

Bally's and Caesars are also working through bankruptcy.

Icahn has said previously he will close the Taj if the union wins a court appeal to get the benefits reinstated.