Thirteen hundred workers walked out of Encore Boston Harbor at seven o’clock on Friday morning. About 300 of them picketed Broadway in Everett on day one. The casino stayed open, running on non-union and replacement staff, and as of Friday there were no negotiations scheduled.
Everett’s mayor came out for the workers. Chelsea, a mile away across the Mystic, has an older and more complicated relationship with that building.
Because Chelsea did not negotiate with Wynn. Chelsea went to arbitration against Wynn. And Chelsea lost.
What Chelsea asked for
Under the state’s gaming law, a casino must reach agreement with surrounding communities. Most cities negotiate. Chelsea could not agree terms, so in April 2014 the matter went to binding arbitration, where each side submits a best and final offer and the arbitrator picks one. Not a compromise. One or the other.
Here is what Chelsea put in, and what it came out with:
| Chelsea asked for | Chelsea received |
|---|---|
| $1.55 million for traffic work at five intersections | $300,000, for two |
| $700,000 a year for public safety | $250,000 |
| $700,000 a year for schools and after-school programs | Nothing |
| $100,000 a year for addiction, mental health and domestic violence services | Nothing |
| A Neighborhood Stabilization Fund | Nothing |
The arbitrator selected Wynn’s offer in its entirety. The award issued June 9, 2014, and the Gaming Commission accepted it on July 10.
On the schools request, the arbitrator wrote that the conditions Superintendent Mary Bourque had described “are and will continue to be caused by conditions other than impacts posed by the Wynn casino.” On traffic, he found three of the five intersections suffered impact that was de minimis. Testimony that Logan taxi traffic was routing through Chelsea he called “conflicting and anecdotal.”
Police Chief Brian Kyes had testified that $250,000 would pay for roughly two and a half officers.
Then-City Manager Jay Ash, on being told Chelsea could come back later if impacts materialised: “petition the MGC after the impacts have occurred, which is absolutely ridiculous.”
What Chelsea actually gets
$650,000 a year. It breaks down as $250,000 for public safety, $225,000 for transitional roads, $100,000 to non-profits and $75,000 for business development, plus a one-time $300,000 for two intersections on Route 16. The payment rises 5 percent starting with the sixteenth annual payment.
For comparison, Boston receives $2 million a year for fifteen years. Malden and Medford get $1 million each.
Chelsea gets $650,000 from a casino that took in $748 million in gross gaming revenue in 2024 and paid the Commonwealth $187 million in taxes on it.
The promises that were made, and where they landed
Jobs. Wynn agreed to prefer qualified Chelsea residents. But read section 3.2.C of the award: Chelsea’s preference is expressly secondary to Everett and Malden, and is pooled with every other surrounding community. Chelsea competes in the third tier alongside Boston, Cambridge, Somerville and Medford.
The best number anyone has: in the Gaming Commission’s survey of new Encore hires between 2019 and 2021, 93 respondents lived in Chelsea — 3.5 percent, sixth on the list, behind Boston, Everett, Malden, Revere and Quincy.
That is the most recent figure that exists. The Commission’s current quarterly reports no longer break the workforce down by city. Encore employed 3,299 people as of July 1, 2025, and there is no public record of how many of them live here. The absence is itself worth noting.
Buying from Chelsea businesses. Wynn committed to a good-faith effort to spend at least $2.5 million a year with vendors based in Chelsea. The Gaming Commission publishes the actual figures quarterly:
2024: $395,440 · $430,428 · $402,176. 2025: $417,744 · $368,179.
That annualises to roughly $1.6 million against a $2.5 million goal, and it represents about 2 percent of Encore’s discretionary spending each quarter. Everett’s goal is $10 million and Everett draws around $2 million a quarter. Chelsea has the smallest target of the six cities listed, and is not meeting it.
Getting there. Encore used to run a free shuttle from the Chelsea Silver Line station. It cancelled that service in July 2024, citing low ridership.
And the Silver Line itself does not help: the SL3 terminates at Chelsea station on Everett Avenue. It does not go to Everett or to the casino.
The regional planning agency’s own assessment of walking or cycling there is worth quoting in full, because it explains a great deal:
“There is limited safe bicycle and pedestrian access from much of Chelsea to Encore. The most direct route takes nearly 50 minutes, and directs people to use Route 16/Revere Beach Parkway and Sweetser Circle. This route has over 50,000 vehicles per day in some locations, and the roadway is rated ‘Poor’ in sidewalk and crosswalk conditions and for safety.”
A fix is in progress. The Metropolitan Area Planning Council received $90,000 in FY2025 to plan a Chelsea–Everett Greenway Connector and $300,000 in FY2026 to design it, running from the Chelsea Greenway at Chestnut Street through Mystic Mall to Encore and the Northern Strand Trail. Phase one finished in November 2025. Design runs through 2027.
So a decade after the casino was approved, Chelsea is still designing a safe way to walk to it.
The strike itself
UNITE HERE Local 26 and Teamsters Local 25 are asking for $10 an hour over three years for non-tipped workers and $5 for tipped. Current wages run from $15 to $32. They also want to keep healthcare, pensions, and contract language guaranteeing minimum hours, which they say Wynn wants to remove. Wynn denies that.
The strike authorisation vote on August 20 was 1,006 to 53. Teamsters Local 25 reported 97 percent support in its own unit of 211 members — warehouse, horticulture, call centre, cage cashiers, limo drivers, valet and guest experience.
Carlos Aramayo, president of Local 26: “We give five-star service, and Wynn gives us a contract worse than a Hampton Inn’s.” He is asking the public not to gamble, eat or drink there during the strike.
Thomas G. Mari, president of Local 25: “When a company refuses to respect the workers who make its profits possible, we shut it down.”
Kathy Woodard, who works in the public areas department: “I don’t think we’re being greedy. I think we just want to survive out here.”
Wynn says it wants an agreement “grounded in financial reality” that is “fair, financially sustainable and protects jobs for the long term,” and states that union wages and benefits grew nearly 40 percent over four years while revenue grew 2 percent. That figure is the company’s own and has not been independently audited.
One correction to coverage circulating elsewhere: some outlets have described Encore’s revenue as surging. Wynn’s own filings show Encore’s operating revenue fell $10.3 million in 2025 against 2024. The casino is enormously profitable and its revenue is drifting down. Both are true.
Why this lands on Chelsea now
Here is the part that should worry anyone watching the city’s finances.
Separate from the $650,000, Chelsea draws on the state’s Community Mitigation Fund, which takes 6.5 percent of casino tax revenue. Chelsea has done well from it: $1,027,000 in FY2026, the full amount requested, covering an enterprise centre, a tourism campaign, two firefighters for two years, and traffic enforcement. $957,400 in FY2025.
The Legislature swept that fund into the general fund in both the FY2026 and FY2027 budgets. Roughly $22 million was awarded statewide in 2024. About $5 million remains available for FY2027.
So Chelsea is looking at losing most of a million dollars a year in casino mitigation, in the same year it cut about 50 school positions to close a budget gap, while the casino generating that revenue is shut down by a strike.
And the money that does flow — Chelsea’s share of the Gaming Local Aid Fund, distributed from the state’s 25 percent cut of gaming revenue — arrives folded into general local aid. The city is never told how much of it came from the casino. There is no way to trace it. That opacity is a policy choice.
Where that leaves us
Chelsea took the position in 2014 that a casino a mile away would cost it money in traffic, policing, schools and social services. An arbitrator disagreed on most counts and handed the city Wynn’s number.
Twelve years on: 93 Chelsea residents among new hires, a vendor commitment running a million dollars short, a cancelled shuttle, a 50-minute walk, and a mitigation fund the state just raided.
None of that is the fault of the housekeepers and gardeners on the picket line. Most of them are somebody’s neighbour in one of these cities, asking for a wage that matches the hotels downtown.
But when the argument gets made that this casino has been good for the region, Chelsea is entitled to ask what its share of that has actually looked like.