Potawatomi Casino laying off 1,600 employees
Potawatomi Hotel & Casino is laying off about 1,600 workers — more than half its workforce — as it continues to fight the devastating economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Menomonee Valley casino, like all the state’s Indian casinos, shut down in mid-March for about two months.
The reopened casinos are generally doing a fraction of the business they did before the shutdown, as they have generally limited games and imposed social distancing rules.
When the Potawatomi casino reopened the week of June 8, the casinos brought back about 1,000 people, out of a workforce of about 2,600.
Those who remained on furlough are being permanently laid off effective Aug. 15, the casino said.
The layoffs affect employees at the
hotel and the casino, according to a spokesman for the off-reservation casino.
“The coronavirus pandemic has forced Potawatomi Hotel & Casino to scale down operations substantially and place a cap on guest traffic to a fraction of normal levels,” Rodney Ferguson, casino chief executive, said in a statement. “As a result, we have recently made the difficult decision to notify a large number of our staff on a temporary furlough that we consider the furlough to be permanent because of its unforeseeable length and impact.”
Those notices were received by employees Friday. The drop in business is being felt throughout Indian Country in Wisconsin, where casino revenue has been the economic engine used to finance tribal governments and services at Wisconsin’s 11 reservations.
Tribal and commercial casinos nationwide are dealing with drops in business and layoffs, said Alan Meister, an Indian gaming expert and CEO at Meister Economic Consulting. But he said the impact is different
“The business will expand operations as the science guides us and pandemic conditions dictate.”
Rodney Ferguson
Casino chief executive
among the tribes than it is at commercial casinos.
“Tribal governments use the profits to pay for infrastructure, education, social and economic programs and to run a government,” Meister said.
The Potawatomi casino generates more gaming revenue than any other Wisconsin casino. A portion of the approximately $400 million it won annually from gamblers each year had been used to pay each tribal member a $70,000 annual dividend per year. Those payments have been suspended since March, sources said.
At the Oneida tribe casino, revenue is down about 50% and the tribe has called back about half its casino workforce, which had been about 900 people before the shutdown, said Tehassi Hill, chairman of the Oneida Nation near Green Bay.
Like the Potawatomi, the Oneida initially offered only a limited number of slot machines at its three casinos. Recently it began also offering bingo and poker, Hill said, explaining the tribe hopes to gradually bring back all its games.
“It’s slow and a little tricky,” Hill said, explaining the tribe’s generous use of partitions to separate machines and players.
At Potawatomi, the reopened casino only has about 1,300 slot machines — or about half its usual amount — available to gamblers. The machines are separated by partitions and several feet of space.
Gamblers must make a reservation to enter the casino and admission is limited to members of its Fire Keepers club.
There is no bingo or table games such as blackjack and craps being offered. There is no sit-down dining available in the casino, though there are take-out options.
How quickly the pandemic is controlled will determine when business and employees return, according to Ferguson.
“The business will expand operations as the science guides us and pandemic conditions dictate,” he said in the statement.