Casinos helping to grow employment

Foxwoods Resort Casino is under a tight deadline, but casino executive Jason Guyot isn’t sweating it.
By May, Foxwoods needs to hire 2,000 employees for its MGM Grand expansion next to the existing casino and hotel in Mashantucket, Conn., and Guyot – director of operations at the yet-to-open luxury hotel – is overseeing the process.
Isn’t Guyot worried about finding enough workers in time, particularly when the new jobs aren’t exactly high paying and unemployment in the region is at relatively low levels?
And then there are the additional 1,000 workers that need to be hired by the restaurants and stores that will lease space in the 2-million-square-foot, 825-room hotel complex.
No, Guyot’s not worried.
He said last week that Foxwoods typically receives about 100 job applications a day – and that rate has doubled recently as word has spread about the need for more help. “If you add that up, that’s a lot of applications a month,” Guyot said. “It’s huge. We will have enough people within the 50-mile radius to fill all the positions.”
Just to make sure, Foxwoods has launched a recruiting campaign focused on potential job applicants in the Connecticut and Rhode Island areas.
The centerpiece of the effort is a new employment Web site – yourdeam.jobs – that will feature job postings and employee benefits information.
Foxwoods officials say the positions include waitresses, chamber maids and security guards. Many will start at $9 an hour, plus benefits. There also will be spots for 350 managers and 277 dealers.
Guyot said billboards and other ads will appear in the New London, New Haven and Hartford markets, as well as in Providence. “We will definitely be reaching out to the Warwick and Providence area,” Guyot said.
Foxwoods executives also expect to attend regional job fairs and have scheduled a symposium at the casino on Friday for state and local agencies, high schools and colleges that Foxwoods works with in Connecticut and Rhode Island “to get everybody on board,” Guyot said.
The MGM Grand at Foxwoods is expected to open in mid-May.
The hiring spree comes as Mohegan Sun moves to complete an expansion of its own in the fall and add up to 800 jobs. Ray Pineault, senior vice president of administration at the Uncasville, Conn., casino, said last week that Mohegan Sun may need as many as 1,500 new workers by 2010, when the casino is scheduled to finish its Project Horizon expansion that will add a 1,000-room hotel and restaurant and retail space.
Although the recruitment plan hasn’t been hammered out, Pineault said many of those employees are sure to be drawn from Rhode Island’s work force.
Many Rhode Islanders already get a paycheck from Connecticut casinos.
Of the 10,500 employees at Foxwoods, Guyot figured as much as 30 percent, or 3,150, commute from the Ocean State, mostly south of Warwick.
The R.I. Economic Development Corporation’s own estimates date to late 2005, when the agency said about 2,500 Rhode Islanders worked at both casinos across the border.
Ed Mazze, University of Rhode Island business professor and an economic forecast manager for the New England Economic Partnership, says the casinos should have no trouble filling the openings, even if many of the jobs aren’t high paying.
“We’re about to enter a recession,” Mazze said last week. “Nine dollars an hour is better than no dollars an hour.”
Indeed, the timing of the expansions is good, Mazze said.
He contended Gov. Donald L. Carcieri’s move to cut 1,000 state jobs to close a gaping state budget deficit will have a ripple effect causing job losses in the private sector – an effect that the casino hiring might partially offset.
The obvious downside: For every Rhode Island resident who crosses the border to work, the State of Rhode Island losses out on a portion of income taxes and the sales tax on whatever spending that worker does while in Connecticut.
At Foxwoods, the new MGM Grand will have a somewhat different focus than the existing casino and hotel.
While MGM Grand will have its own casino, it will take up only 50,000 square feet – a small portion of the complex’s total space. “Gambling is an amenity, but not the major driver,” Guyot explained. “When it was drawn up, the hotel was geared toward conventions.”
The numbers bear that out. MGM Grand will contain 100,000 square feet of meeting space, and its largest ballroom – at 49,000 square feet — will be twice the size of the existing Grand Pequot Ballroom. “It’s something that is unmatched in the area,” Guyot said.
Foxwoods’ projections show that 35 percent of the room bookings will be convention-related. Many events already have reservations. “We’ve been booking them for about two years now,” Guyot said.
MGM Grand executives say hiring the right employees is crucial in achieving the stellar service the hotel is aiming for. “That will be a key element to the entire facility,” Guyot said. •