The Dole Awards #4 – Best Supporting Layoff

This award is in recognition of a company with major layoffs, that by themself aren’t crippling, however when compiled with the already weakened economy will do severe damage and will serve to breathe more despair into this already crumbling economy and keep this recession continuing strong.

And the winner is …

#4 The Las Vegas Sands Corp Company (LVS)
12/23/08
11,500


This one is a bit of a dark horse. They doubled up Microsoft, but didn’t crack the top tier of layoffs based on the numbers. According to forbes.com laid off 11,500 people from the Las Vegas Sands on December 23, 2008. Classic Christmas style layoffs here and that really helped them get over the top and beat companies like Caterpillar and AT&T for this award. There is nothing that will ruin your Christmas and subsequent new year than a pink slip on the 23rd. Classic move to try and soften the blow of a happy christmas. In my opinion not enough companies use this tactic.

The Las Vegas Sands Corporation owns six properties in all, two of these properties being in Las Vegas, one being the Venetian and the other being the Palazzo. The beauty of this set of layoffs is two fold.

First we have the layoffs in America. They boast that this is less than 2% of the layoffs on the strip, and The Sands Corp. have been congratulated for hanging on so long while other Resorts and Casinos began cutting jobs much earlier in the recession. However, with these layoffs coming as well as those that will undoubtedly be in the future, there are those that are worried about the region being able to bounce back as a tourist destination. This is amazing to me because that’s all that Las Vegas is. Without the casino’s it’s just a desert that nobody wants to go to. With all these cuts and the public fear of spending money we are looking at places that are tourist destinations that will be hit incredibly hard and will be recessed even after the rest of us start to pull ourselves out of this economic slide. The concern is that all these cuts will cause service to suffer and hurt the regions ability to bring in tourist. UNLV Gaming Research Director David Schwartz is quoted on klas-tv.com saying “So what if someone comes here on one of these really good deals and finds that the place is a mess. They are probably not going to come back when they have enough money to travel anywhere they want and pay top price.”

The other half of this equation is the international side of things. The Sands Corp. has stopped construction in Portuguese territory. This will halt a project that is worth 12 Billion dollars. Additionally, they have put on hold some operations and projects in China. Since I read “The World Is Flat” I understand how important this is in our society. We are now not only dealing with these layoffs and this roll back of spending in the state, but also in our global economy. We have seen recently that the rest of the world has started to falter since we’ve been in this recession and this is just another level of that. With everyone in America trying to hold onto whatever money they can get their hands on, this is going to cause ripples throughout the world. Right away we see that these layoffs affect Asia and Europe, and this was only one resort chain.

So 11,500 is not a catastrophic amount of layoffs in the grand scheme of things, but its domestic and global implications get it an inaugural Dole Award. Congratulations Sands Corporation, welcome to the top 5.