Oaklawn announces increase in minimum wage

Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort announced Monday that it will increase its hourly minimum wage for employees who don’t receive tips from $9.25 an hour to $13 an hour as of Monday, Sept. 30.

The hourly minimum wage for employees who receive tips will increase from $2.76 an hour to $6 an hour, Oaklawn said in a news release.

The increase will benefit about 970 full-time, parttime and seasonal employees.

“We are now striving for a new level of excellence and when we’re looking at our new level of excellence we believe that our current staff is one in which we wanted to make make sure we invested it in them,” Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort General Manager Wayne Smith said.

“(We) also hope to attract the best talent that is out there as we look towards our expansion and our season workforce that is coming up that we’re going to be hiring for in the next (15) months,” Smith said.

Smith said by the time the Oaklawn expansion is complete in January 2021, Oaklawn will have approximately 1,400 to 1,500 full-time, part-time and seasonal employees.

“We’ve been looking at our current pay rates, reassessing where we stand in the market and looking at our team, and we determined that there’s no better time than the present to come out and announce this,” Smith said. “We are just trying to raise the bar, and hopefully we can retain all the folks that we have and also looking towards our seasonal folks that we’ll be bringing in.”

Arkansas voters approved Issue 5 in November 2018 to raise the state’s minimum wage to $11 an hour by 2021, increasing the state minimum wage over the next three years starting Jan. 1, 2019. At $13

an hour, Oaklawn employees’ wages will remain above the state minimum wage in 2021 when this three-year increase is complete and state minimum wage has reached $11 an hour.

“We’re one of the highest minimum wage employers in Arkansas and we are striving to become the employer of choice for all of Arkansas and this is a good opportunity for us to get there,” Smith said.

“Oaklawn’s success is because of our team members,” Oaklawn President Louis Cella said in the news release announcing the increase. “And, we are making this change to show that investing in our employees is just as important as the investment we’re making in our facility and its expansion.”

“This move is yet another component of our vision to bring ‘a new level of excellence’ to everything we do when it comes to our current and future team members,” Smith said in the release.

“We’re focused on a ‘new level of action’ in both the racetrack and the casino by being the first and only legal sports book in the state and by adding live craps and blackjack earlier this year. We’re getting ready for a ‘new level of racing’ with an unprecedented four $1 million stakes races during the

2020 live race meet. And, with our massive expansion project being right on schedule, we’re preparing to deliver a ‘new level of excitement’ to the region,” he said.

According to Monday’s news release, Oaklawn’s expansion project includes six new barns; a 28,000-squarefoot casino expansion; additional dining options including a fine dining restaurant; a

200-room, seven-story hotel complete with standard rooms and suites, with half of the hotel overlooking the racetrack and an outdoor pool with event lawn area, state-of-the-art spa, fitness center; and a 14,000 square-foot event center including meeting rooms and a ballroom that will accommodate 1,400 for a concert and

1,000 for a banquet. The project also includes valet parking and redesigning and adding more parking spaces.