There’s still no timeline for Tropicana Las Vegas to reopen, certainly not by mid-July. That news comes as Penn National Gaming slashed 2,575 jobs over eight states. Evidently Penn doesn’t expect the current surge in business to last, as most of the job cuts will come in August, with more in September. Hollywood St. Louis, one of the company’s most lucrative casinos, is targeted for 455 sackings, while nearby River City eliminated 329 jobs. Hollywood Columbus and Hollywood Dayton will lose 300 positions. M Resort will get hit with 328 firings, Argosy Riverside in Kansas City with 289 and Kansas Speedway casino with 218.
At the corporate level, 233 positions will be eliminated. As bad as all that looks, it’s nothing compared to the austerity program underway at Boyd Gaming, which has warned of 60% workforce reductions at some of its casinos. (As many as 1,800 jobs at The Orleans could be impacted.) As for Penn, it said the layoffs “are the unfortunate result of COVID-19 related business circumstances that were sudden, dramatic, and beyond our control,” in a letter to the Nevada Department of Employment, Training & Rehabilitation. It continued, “These significant drags on our business will likely continue for the foreseeable future.”
South FL is getting whacked anyway with a very high new case rate. This will only make it higher. My 96 year old Dad lives in Boca, and my Brother has my casino loving Dad locked down. It does seem that with much more testing, there are more positives, and many more known cases with no symptoms, surprising the heck out of a lot of people when their test come back positive. My employees get checked every 2 weeks. So far, 2 of them have been positive, and did not have a sniffle. I am in So Cal, and LA County is getting hit, too. Although hospital rates are not going up, than goodness. We will see. An Italian doc says that the virus is getting weaker, but more easily spread. Doubt that’s trud.