Unite Here is urging shareholders to vote for a proposal to declassify the Board of Directors at Penn Entertainment's upcoming AGM on 16 June.
This would transition from a classified structure to one in which Directors are elected by their peers.
According to Unite, Penn shareholders “already supported declassification in 2010, yet the Board has not implemented that outcome.”
The union claims that declassification proposals see an “average shareholder support of 77.9%, resulting in a passage rate of 86% across 14 proposals… Today, maintaining a classified structure places PENN increasingly out of step with shareholder preference.”
Unite argues that this would be the first step in recovering confidence in the Penn Board, while also enhancing accountability.
Although the Board has recommended against this proposal, Unite continues to outline several reasons as to why this is the best possible direction for the business.
Firstly, Penn argues that an election system would be too difficult to maintain because the regulatory nature of the industry would “hinder [its] ability to attract talented director candidates.”
But MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment, Boyd Gaming, Golden Entertainment, and Full House Resorts all operate under a declassified system.
Equally, Penn argued that it has the “largest regional footprint in the industry” due to its “42 gaming and racing properties in 19 states”, but Caesars has "52 domestic properties in 18 states.”
However, all of these feels strangely familiar when thinking about the public spat between majority shareholder HG Vora and Penn only last year.
HG Vora had several complaints regarding decisions made by Penn leadership, and while an agreement was made between the two earlier this year, it seems that it has only created space for another dissatisfied party to raise its head.
Unite Here is a labor union in the United States and Canada with around 300,000 active members
