More than 250 casino workers take buyouts

Voluntary resignation program to „rebalance“ staff, casinos‘ president says

More than 250 casino workers took the recent buyouts offered by Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort and Casino Niagara, a move the company made to “rebalance” its mix of full-time and part-time employees.

In a memo addressed to all casino workers, Niagara Casinos president Art Frank called the response to the first-ever voluntary resignation program a “win/win for all parties.”

“It is a win for the company as we have been able to rebalance our full-time to part-time mix that allows us to be more responsive to changing market conditions,” Frank wrote in a memo dated Saturday.

It’s a win for people who took advantage of the offer because they took “an opportunity to make a significant change in their lives,” he wrote.

In April, the casinos offered all their full-time employees a voluntary resignation package that would give them three weeks’ pay for every year of service. The program capped the buyout at 26 weeks’ pay.

The buyout program was intended to change the balance of full-time and part-time workers as a way to better operate a 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year business, a spokesman said.

Before the buyouts, the casinos had 5,000 employees. About 65 per cent of them were full-time.