Pennsylvania Allows More Gambling, Looks to CT For Workers

This summer, Pennsylvania changed its laws to allow slot parlors to expand into table games, and as a result the market in that state is exploding. So last week, gaming executives from Pennsylvania came to Connecticut last week on a recruiting drive. As the troubles of Connecticut’s casinos continue to mount, there seems no shortage of trained workers ready to move west. WNPR’s Harriet Jones reports.

Several booths are set up here in a ballroom at the Mystic Marriott, where walk-in candidates can be seen right away by an interviewer from Parx casino in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. Ari Misrachi is director of table games at Parx – he himself used to be a poker dealer at Foxwoods.

“We came up here today to tap into an experienced market. With two of the largest gaming casinos in the world, this was definitely a good market to tap into, plus it’s a pretty close proximity to where we’re located. If we are to hire some folks, it’s not too much of a relocation for them.”

“I just think it’s ironic that they should show up a couple of weeks after the layoff.”

Robert Williams from Bozrah just lost his job as a supervisor and pit boss at Mohegan Sun, where he worked for 13 years. Before that he was a dealer at Foxwoods.

“I’ve been doing this for 18 and a half years, I’ve made it my career, I’ve made it may passion. I’m hopeful that the market’s going to be a lot better down there. Any time you have a newer casino you’re going to have a lot of new play, as in people coming to investigate the new casino. So the first three or four years of any new casino it’s going to be very busy.”

At a regular job fair, you might expect many of the candidates to be unemployed or looking for their first jobs. Of the candidates I spoke with in Mystic, many were still employed at one of the Connecticut casinos, all with at least a decade’s experience under their belt.

“We’re kind of all walking on eggshells. We don’t know who’s going to be next, we don’t know if we meet the criteria of being laid off, we don’t know if we’re going to survive.”

This woman, who didn’t want to give her name, still works at Mohegan Sun. She says the recent layoff there has devastated many people.

“I’m definitely not happy where I am right now. First of all, the atmosphere inside the casino changed. After the layoff—it was a very painful situation, there’s a lot of people crying, there’s a lot of friends and family gone. When people go into this industry at 18 years old and make this their lifetime career, you’re taking something away from them that they had for 20 years, you name it. Even if there was another job in the area, you could be walking into the same situation as before. Walk in, and you get walked right out the door.”

That kind of uncertainty creates an opportunity for employers like Parx to take advantage of a trained labor force, as gaming markets around Connecticut continue to expand at the expense of Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun.

For WNPR, I'm Harriet Jones.