Harrah’s property lays off 100

Monday, Aug. 20, 2001 | 11:07 a.m.

The Rio hotel-casino has laid off about 100 employees, as cost-control measures continue at the struggling Harrah's Entertainment Inc. property.

The layoffs involved a mix of dealers and table game supervisors, said Tom Jenkin, general manager of the off-Strip resort.

"It was a situation where we evaluated the number of employees in the table games department, and had more than we needed to run the business we had," Jenkin said. "We let go the ones we didn't have jobs for."

But the cuts weren't the result of a recent shift away from very high-end play at the Rio, Jenkin said. In fact, most of the cuts occurred as low-limit games were removed.

"We've had as much high-end play as we had before ... we changed the limits, but we've had the same customers at the new limits," Jenkin said. "We just had too many games (in low-limit pits) that were sitting empty, games that didn't do enough to break even."

Poor performance by the Rio's casino hurt Harrah's earnings in the quarter ending June 30, as it has consistently for the past 18 months. Harrah's responded by replacing Rio General Manager Jay Sevigny with Jenkin, the head of Harrah's Las Vegas, and by de-emphasizing high-end play.

So far this year, the Rio has cut more than 200 jobs. Further layoffs can't be ruled out, Jenkin said, but neither can hiring in certain departments if it's determined more workers are necessary.

"(But) no other department was remotely in the same situation as the table game department," Jenkin said.