Mohegan Sun employees rankled by policy changes
Personal time off adjustments, lack of bonuses cause concern
Mohegan — Longtime Mohegan Sun employees reportedly scrambled to use accrued vacation time late last week after learning the casino was implementing changes in its personal time off policy, which took effect Monday.
Hundreds of employees “called out” Friday, Saturday and Sunday, according to several employees who asked not to be identified.
“Call outs are part of our business ... they happen every day,” Ray Pineault, Mohegan Sun’s president and general manager, said Wednesday. “Over the weekend, all our table games, our restaurants, our slots were operating. We handled what occurred.”
In a newsletter disseminated last Thursday, casino management outlined “Exciting Changes Coming” for employees and highlighted the Mohegan Tribe’s partnership with the Yale New Haven Health System, which will provide health care for tribal members, employees and their families. Changes in the “Personal Time Off” policy and the lack of end-of-year bonuses also were announced, as was an increase of at least 3 percent in the maximum wage range for positions at every level.
“Finally, as many of you know, due to a number of factors, not the least of which was a less than friendly Table Games hold for the year, we fell significantly short of meeting our budget profit goals for fiscal year 2019,” the newsletter says. “Unfortunately because of that, we cannot celebrate with a bonus distribution as we have over the past few years.”
Table-games dealers who communicated with The Day also complained that Mohegan Sun management has made changes that have
New York — State prosecutors in New York City asked a judge Wednesday to reject claims by the defense team for twice-convicted Paul Manafort that their mortgage fraud case is double jeopardy.
In court papers filed in Manhattan, the prosecutors said that the case against the former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump is based on allegations that were never resolved in a 2018 federal trial in Virginia. Jurors found Manafort guilty of eight counts of tax- and bank-fraud charges but couldn’t reach a verdict on 10 other charges, resulting in a mistrial on those counts.
“Declaration of a mistrial because of a deadlocked jury is precisely the type of situation where New York courts allow a second prosecution for the same underlying conduct,” prosecutors wrote.
Prosecutors and lawyers for Manafort spoke briefly to a judge on the matter at sidebar Wednesday without making arguments in open court. Manafort wasn’t there, but the judge ordered him to attend the next pretrial hearing on Dec. 18. No trial date has been set.
The 70-year-old Manafort has pleaded not guilty to state charges that could keep him behind bars even if the Republican president pardons him for the federal crimes uncovered during the probe of Russian election meddling. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. announced the charges in March, just minutes after Manafort was sentenced in the second of the two federal cases, saying in a statement at the time: “No one is beyond the law in New York.”
Manafort’s federal cases were byproducts of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian influence on the 2016 election, but a judge who presided over one of them made clear that they had nothing to do with Russian election interference, but rather Manafort’s years of “gaming the system.”
The 16-count New York indictment alleges Manafort gave false and misleading information in applying for residential mortgage loans, starting in 2015 and continuing until three days before Trump’s inauguration in 2017. He is also charged with falsifying business records and conspiracy.
Manafort is currently serving a 7½-year sentence in a Pennsylvania lockup.