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MGM Springfield Still Behind Its Promised Goal For Hiring Women

MGM Springfield continues to miss its hiring goal for women, and is now placing some blame for it on the pandemic. The question came up Thursday during a Massachusetts Gaming Commission meeting.

The casino has promised that half its total workforce would be women.

But MGM has been well off that mark since opening in 2018.

Women are currently only 42% of casino employees. In the past, MGM officials blamed having to hire for what they called male-dominated industries, such as security.

As far as the effects of COVID-19, MGM Springfield's human resources director Jason Randall gave this example to regulators:

"An employee who wants to return, that we've had great conversations with about wanting to return to the workplace, who can't give us a defined start date that she can return, while she's seeking a caretaker for her child," Randall said.

Gaming Commission chair Cathy Judd-Stein asked about the pandemic's effect on hiring more women — and she did not push back hard on Randall's response. Instead, she said the issue would be "an ongoing dialogue."

Poker to return to Springfield

MGM Springfield made the Gaming Commission's planned discussion an easy one during Thursday’s meeting when it came to the absence of poker at the western Massachusetts casino.

"So, really, I think our first statement is that poker will be returning to MGM Springfield," said Daniel Miller, the casino's compliance director, right off the top. "We have plans that it will come back in Q4 of this year."

The state's two casinos, MGM Springfield and Encore Boston Harbor, were freed of nearly all COVID-19 restrictions and resumed mostly normal operations in late May. But they did not offer poker, which had been prohibited by the commission when regulators first allowed the casinos to reopen under health and safety restrictions last year.

This spring, the Gaming Commission began to take notice of the 10-fold increase in complaints about the lack of legal poker in the Bay State.

Both casinos said they would make decisions about the future of poker by the end of the year.

"Where previously we had made the statement that we would make a decision on it by the end of the year, we have at least made that decision, and we will move forward with a plan on how to return it within that quarter," Miller said, rounding out what ended up being a discussion for less than two minutes.

While poker will return to MGM Springfield, the casino will bring the popular card game back at a reduced capacity. Players can expect about 10 to 12 tables instead of the 28 that used to populate the casino's poker room, Miller said.

"We have listened to our poker players, and also our previous dealers, that want this back as an option at our casino, and we want to provide it to them," he said.

Encore Boston Harbor told the Gaming Commission in late July that a reintroduction of poker would require the casino to close other table games, because it cannot find enough people to hire as dealers. An Encore executive also said the former poker room is now filled with "some of our highest-performing slot machines."

"Based on current market conditions, and the resulting need to prioritize space, Encore Boston Harbor will not be bringing back live poker at this time. If and when poker should return to Encore, it will likely be at a reduced capacity," an Encore spokesperson said in July.

Poker is different from many other games, in that gamblers play against — and win money from or lose it to— each other rather than the casino. Instead of the casino generating revenue by winning a game, as it usually does, casinos generally profit off poker by claiming a rake, or a percentage of cash game pots and tournament entry fees.

Poker rooms at casinos are "somewhat notorious for their inability to produce competitive levels of profit per square foot," researcher Anthony Lucas wrote in a paper published in the UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal in 2013. Around the country, other operators have decided not to offer poker at this time, Bruce Band, the assistant director of the commission's Investigations and Enforcement Bureau and chief of the Gaming Agents Division, told commissioners last month.

Even without poker, Encore Boston Harbor raked in a record-high $59.07 million in gaming revenue in July and MGM Springfield had its best month since before Encore opened in June 2019, counting $23.71 million in gaming revenue. Combined with $12.95 million in monthly revenue at Plainridge Park Casino, July produced a record $27 million in gaming taxes and fees for the state.

On Thursday, Band provided the Gaming Commission with an update on the number of gaming positions currently offered at each of the three licensees.

Plainridge Park Casino currently has 910 active slot machines, he said. MGM Springfield is operating 1,609 slot machines, 52 table games and 15 stadium gaming seats, which allow gamblers to play blackjack, roulette, and variations of baccarat on computer screens, but with live dealers.

At Encore Boston Harbor, gamblers have their pick of 2,608 slot machines, 180 table games and 53 stadium gaming seats, Band said.

Material from State House News Service was used in this report. 

Copyright 2021 New England Public Media. To see more, visit New England Public Media.

Adam is based at New England Public Radio’'s Berkshire County news bureau in Pittsfield, where he has been since August, 2015. He joined NEPR as a freelance reporter and fill-in operations assistant during the summer of 2011. For more than 15 years, Adam has had a number stops throughout his broadcast career, including as a news reporter and anchor, sports host and play-by-play announcer as well as a producer and technician.

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SOMOS CONNECTICUT es una iniciativa de Connecticut Public, la emisora local de NPR y PBS del estado, que busca elevar nuestras historias latinas y expandir programación que alza y informa nuestras comunidades latinas locales. Visita CTPublic.org/latino para más reportajes y recursos. Para noticias, suscríbase a nuestro boletín informativo en ctpublic.org/newsletters.

The independent journalism and non-commercial programming you rely on every day is in danger.

If you’re reading this, you believe in trusted journalism and in learning without paywalls. You value access to educational content kids love and enriching cultural programming.

Now all of that is at risk.

Federal funding for public media is under threat and if it goes, the impact to our communities will be devastating.

Together, we can defend it. It’s time to protect what matters.

Your voice has protected public media before. Now, it’s needed again. Learn how you can protect the news and programming you depend on.

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