One of the reasons that there isn’t more good news in this space is that there’s so much bad news to go around. Today, GamingFloor.com pulled aside the veil that has shrouded the mass firings at the Atlantic City Tropicana. According to the site, no fewer than 929 workers have been given the axe — 18.4% of the workforce. (If you’re working for a casino that’s about to be taken private, be afraid. Be very afraid.)

Given how customer service is the bedrock of the casino industry’s success, the implications for a visitor’s experience at the A.C. Trop are dire. A casino resort isn’t a Jergens Soap assembly line, no matter how much Columbia Sussex CEO William Yung III would have us believe otherwise.

Yung hasn’t taken the same-sized scythe to the Casino Aztar riverboat in Evansville, Ind. But he’s still managed to set off an Indiana Gaming Commission investigation. And here in Nevada, the timeline for starting the teardown-and-rebuilding of the L.V. Tropicana has been pushed back to 2008, suggesting that reality vis-a-vis our sapped construction industry is finally starting to take hold at Columbia Sussex HQ.

Meanwhile, the Sun’s Jeff Simpson has been getting an earful from people familiar with Columbia Sussex’s style and convincingly predicts it’s going to try and put a beat-down on the Culinary Union this summer. Personally, I think it’s way better than 50-50 that the Culinary will have to picket the Vegas Trop, giving Yung an excuse to close the place altogether and reopen it as a non-union joint. That would allow him to join the select company of the likes of the Elardi family (late of the Frontier) and the inimitable, Hitler-loving Ralph Engelstad.

Sutton speaks: While we’re on the subject of GamingFloor.com, site owner Ian Sutton says that last weekend’s McKee vs. Simpson scrum (a more literate version of the Donald Trump vs. Vince McMahon pay-per-view tussle) was the Easter weekend’s top story on his Web portal. However, journalistic blood sport is not our topic today …

Sutton notes that dealers splitting tokes with supervisors is "almost universal" outside the U.S. (and common practice in Oklahoma and California, I’m told). He adds:

"Whatever the dealers at Wynn earn I would like to see some of them cope with a week in the casinos of Romania, the Ukraine, Cambodia or even provincial Great Britain. Not only would they return thankful for being, as Wynn perhaps rightly stated ‘the highest paid dealers in the world’ they would realise that even if they aren’t the best in the world they certainly are among the luckiest. The best and most talented managers are those that have worked their way through the ranks and individuals having the ability to progress should be rewarded, not punished."

Question of the Week: Riviera stock closed the week at a 52-week high. What do RIV shareholders know that we don’t?