First NC casinos face severe labor shortage. A new casino near Charlotte isn’t helping
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians faces a labor shortage so severe at its two casinos in the N.C. mountains that tribal leaders are considering workers from other countries and housing them in multiple dorms.
Nearly 800 “good-paying jobs with benefits” are unfilled at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort and another 90 at Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River Casino in Murphy, tribal council member Boyd Owle said at a March 3 council meeting, according to a recording of the meeting on the tribe’s website.
The July opening of the Catawba Indians’ Two Kings Casino Resort in Kings Mountain 35 minutes from Charlotte made the need for foreign workers more pressing, Cherokee leaders said at the meeting.
“Competition is now here,” Cherokee Principal Chief Richard Sneed told the council. “It’s in Charlotte.”
“You’re right,” Owle replied. “We’ve got a new kid in town, right down the road, 2 1/2 hours. I do see the need for workforce housing.”
Harrah’s Cherokee Casinos employs 3,861 workers, including 2,897 at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort and 964 at Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River Casino & Hotel, according to Brian Saunooke, regional vice-president of marketing for Harrah’s Cherokee.
The Catawbas’ opened a single-story facility July 1 off Interstate 85 exit 5, about 35 miles west of Charlotte. The casino has about 260 employees, a spokesman said.
In December, Two Kings doubled its gambling machines with 500 new electronic table games, including blackjack, roulette, craps and baccarat. The 24/7 facility is the first phase of the planned $273 million Two Kings Casino Resort.
The Catawba haven’t announced a timetable for the project, which the tribe expects will create about 2,600 permanent jobs and thousands of construction jobs.
In a statement Wednesday, Catawba Two Kings Casino officials said the casino was fortunate to have a “strong response” at its job fairs. The casino “has maintained a full staff since then with limited turnover,” according to the casino. “We are proud to be providing good jobs in the Charlotte region, including to residents of Cleveland County and to Catawba citizens.”
Cherokee expand NC casino
In October, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians opened a $330 million expansion of the tribe’s Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort. The expansion included a 19-story, 725-room hotel tower and a convention center.
The new hotel tower, called the Cherokee, was the tribe’s fourth.
Guy Fieri’s Cherokee Kitchen + Bar opened in the tower, which also features a two-story, open-air lobby, a 30-foot registration desk and a second-floor terrace pool with views of the Great Smoky Mountains.
The new, three-level, 83,000-square-foot convention center includes a 32,000 square-foot ballroom and a 33,000-square-foot exhibition hall.
Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort was the first casino in North Carolina when it opened in 1997, about 165 miles west of Charlotte, a three-hour drive away.
Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River Casino — a four-hour drive from Charlotte — was the state’s second casino when it opened in 2015 near Georgia and Tennessee.
Two Kings is the state’s third casino.
Worker supply ‘exhausted’
Owle said the Cherokee casinos have “exhausted” the supply of available local workers.
The tribe has little choice but to consider foreign workers through the U.S. government’s H-2B temporary non-agricultural workers visa program, he and other tribal leaders said.
“We’ve got to do something,” Owle said. “That’s the cash cow up there,” he added, referring to Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort.
“The casino pays for everything we do as a tribe,” Sneed told the council March 3.
Boosting casino pay
In May 2021, Harrah’s Cherokee Casinos increased the starting pay rate of all positions that do not earn tips to $15 an hour, according to an announcement by the tribe at the time. Many employees who also earn tips also saw their starting rates climb, by varying amounts depending on the job.
Harrah’s Cherokee remains competitive with wages in Western North Carolina, according to Breanna Sneed, spokeswoman for the office of Principal Chief Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
“We also raised salaried positions at the same time to keep our compensation model equitable at all levels in the organization,” she told the Observer in an email. “We offer a generous benefits package, which includes paid time off, medical/dental/vision insurance for all full time positions, a 5% 401K match, an onsite medical clinic and tuition reimbursement.”
The casino has vacancies for all front-of-house, guest-contact positions and offers hiring bonuses up to $3,000, Breanna Sneed said.
“We are currently focusing on staffing for our new Gordon Ramsay Food Market and are hiring cooks, stewards, cashiers, dining attendants, hosts and bartenders, to name a few,” she said.
The casino always needs “friendly faces” to assist guests as security officers, cocktail servers, table games dealers, cleaning specialists and front desk agents, she added.
Harrah’s Cherokee offers flexible scheduling for both full- and part-time positions, Breanna Sneed said.
Causes of casinos labor shortage
Cherokee casinos have traditionally added staff entering the busy summer season, according to Breanna Sneed.
And new amenities this year require even more workers, she said, including the new hotel tower, added convention space, the opening of Guy Fieri’s Cherokee Kitchen + Bar and the upcoming opening of Gordon Ramsay’s Food Market.
“That being said, we did have many employees who chose not to return to work with the onset of the pandemic for a variety of reasons,” Breanna Sneed said.
“With the growth of our property, extraordinary business demand from our guests and vacancies created by the pandemic, we have seen the number of open positions rise over the past two years,” she said.
The tribe is looking at various sources of labor, including using third-party providers, some of whom “focus on foreign-labor and J-1 Visa programs,” she said.
J-1 visas allow people from other countries to visit the U.S. to “teach, study, conduct research, demonstrate special skills or receive on the job training for periods ranging from a few weeks to several years,” according to the U.S. Department of State.
Catawba jobs advantage
Cherokee Principal Chief Richard Sneed said the Catawba tribe can draw from a much larger pool of potential workers in the more populous Charlotte region.
Several weeks before Two Kings opened, officials with Delaware North, the Buffalo, N.Y.-based consultant on the casino project, told the Observer that the 250 full-time workers who were needed for the facility had been hired, except for a few cocktail servers.
The employees included about 50 Catawbas, according to Delaware North.
For the Cherokee, hiring H-2B workers and buying property to build dormitory-style buildings to house them may be the only paths forward, Sneed said.
“We have to do what’s necessary to support the enterprise that’s paying the bills for everything,” he said at the March 3 meeting.
Land for worker dorms
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Tribal Council is considering buying a 9.5-acre grassy parcel within its boundary lands for $2.5 million and building the dorms there. The council held off voting March 3 to see if a lower price can be had for the land.
At the meeting, tribal council member Teresa McCoy was irate that her council would buy land and build housing for foreign workers when, she said, “we’ve got hundreds of families without housing.”
Historically speaking, she said before getting up and leaving the meeting, “we got moved out of here, and our land was taken from us. And now this chief comes in and wants to build housing for them?”
Richard Sneed and other tribal leaders cited the hundreds of homes that were built in just the past year for tribal families, and hundreds more homes that are underway or planned.
Sneed said a tribal land acquisitions committee that he chairs is working to secure land for the dorms, not he alone.
This story was originally published March 17, 2022 at 11:49 AM with the headline "First NC casinos face severe labor shortage. A new casino near Charlotte isn’t helping."