For months, TWO Harrah’s Entertainment properties in Atlantic City, Caesars and Bally’s, have silently endured a multi-media blitz from the United Auto Workers union on two of its properties, Caesars and Bally’s (l.). The union has been slamming the company for allegedly refusing to negotiate contracts while cutting employee pay and benefits and boosting its CEO’s compensation by millions of dollars.

The campaign, which the union acknowledged cost millions to mount, included billboards, radio and television spots, street signs and even banner planes that flew up and down the resort’s famous beach and boardwalk, proclaiming, “Everybody loses when casino workers are treated unfairly.”

Now Harrah’s Entertainment Inc. is fighting back with a campaign of its own, with the message, “Don’t let the UAW turn Atlantic City into the next Detroit!”

Harrah’s Entertainment owns Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City, Caesars Atlantic City, Bally’s Atlantic City and the Showboat Casino Hotel. The casino giant has taken out full-page newspaper advertisements listing the history of the UAW in grim detail—from the bankruptcies of Chrysler and GM to government takeovers and thousands of lost jobs.

According to the casino ad, the UAW’s track record in its core industry is “nothing but bad news,” including “a bankrupt American auto industry and government takeovers.” Harrah’s also says it has attended more than 50 bargaining sessions with the UAW without success, and ends by declaring, “Everyone loses if Atlantic City can’t compete.”

The Harrah’s ad does not say that the management at Bally’s has refused to bargain with the union, feeling the union election was tainted. The company has challenged that result before the National Labor Relations Board.

Employees at four Atlantic City casinos—Bally’s, Caesars, Trump Plaza and the Tropicana—have voted to form unions, but none has reached a contract agreement. Though Tropicana workers have authorized a strike, they have not walked out.

While saying they intend to honor labor laws, the Harrah’s casinos also say any deal must make economic sense in the worst operating environment in the 31-year history of gaming in Atlantic City. Hit hard by competition from slot parlors in Pennsylvania and New York as well as a crippling recession, the shore town’s 11 casinos face their third straight year of revenue declines. So far this year, revenue has slid nearly 16 percent.

While UAW officials would not comment on the casinos’ ad campaign, Regional Director Joe Ashton issued a release saying workers “have a right to bargain a reasonable contract to improve their standard of living.”

Dan Nita, Harrah’s mid-Atlantic regional president, told the Associated Press that the company is bargaining in good faith, but first-time contracts “tend to take a long time since everything that happens in the eight hours an employee is on-site has to be put down in writing.”

He also said the company has a good working relationship with other employee unions, including those that represent housekeeping and professional trades workers.

“We were taking a quiet approach, turning the other cheek,” said Nita of the company’s long silence. “But some of our employees and customers felt we were doing them a disservice by not showing that this is a good place to work.”