SENECA GAMING CORP.
210 employees laid off from jobs at casinos, hotels
Seneca Gaming Corp. is going to have to get along with fewer employees because of the recession.
Seneca officials Tuesday announced a 5 percent across-the-board layoff, or 210 of its 4,200 employees.
Pink slips were handed out in the gambling operation’s casinos, hotels and entertainment complexes in Niagara Falls and Salamanca, as well as the temporary casino in Buffalo.
It’s another sign that the economy is affecting those who gamble. Fewer people are throwing the dice or playing slots, and revenue is down.
Besides the layoffs, the corporation announced a salary freeze for those making more than $70,000 a year, suspended yearly bonuses and will reduce salaries for its senior management and board of directors.
Brian Hansberry, president and chief executive officer of Seneca Gaming, said the company has been reducing expenses over the last six months.
“Unfortunately, that was not enough, and we had to take a measure that all of the members of the senior management team wanted to avoid,” Hansberry said in a prepared statement.
The announcement did not come from Philip Pantano, who since April 2005 has served as spokesman for Seneca Gaming. Pantano was among those who lost his job, and though he declined extensive comment, he said he was not laid off, but his position was eliminated.
Susan L. Asquith, a senior vice president with Travers Collins & Co. who has served in the past as a spokeswoman for Barry E. Snyder Sr., the chairman of Seneca Gaming and newly elected president of the Seneca Nation, made Tuesday’s announcement.
“We are confident in the strength of our long-term business model,” said Snyder, “but have to be realistic about what is happening in the economy locally, regionally and nationally and how that impacts discretionary spending habits.”
Snyder said that net revenues have dropped over the last several months and that the layoffs are being made to preserve as many jobs as possible.
Late last month, Barry Brandon, the gaming corporation’s general counsel who had disagreements with Snyder, lost his $700,000-a-year job.
The downturns at Seneca Gaming are reflected across the industry. At a casino conference last week in Las Vegas, some of the country’s biggest casinos said they, too, were cutting back.
The chairman and chief executive officer of Harrah’s Entertainment said that casinos had been spending like “drunken sailors” and said problems with the economy will change how they do business.
The layoffs continue the grim news for Seneca Gaming.
In August, the company suspended work on $463 million in expansion projects in Buffalo and Salamanca.
Construction was halted on the $333 million Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino and Hotel project after $47 million was spent on the steel superstructure. Seneca Gaming also halted work on the expansion of the Seneca Allegany Casino and Hotel in Salamanca.
mbeebe@buffnews.com dherbeck@buffnews.com
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