Cedar Point cuts pay

Here's the Sandusky Register article.

Register: While pay for new hires at Cedar Point continued to fall post-COVID, employees hired under the legacy pay structure have continued to receive the hourly bonus if they returned each year up through the 2024 season.

This month, however, returning employees hired under legacy pay have been notified that the $5-per-hour pay bump is going away.

Welp, it's going to be interesting too see how staffing levels play out. Might not have a huge effect.

I guess it depends on how many people hired in 2020 had planned on returning this year, and of those how many won't return for less pay. I would imagine the first group is not particularly large, which would mean the latter group is pretty small.

So, while I would not expect a further deterioration of staffing quality, they sure don't seem interested in improving staffing quality, which is disappointing. Personally, I'd happily pay a fair bit more to get into the park if the experience were improved via better operations.

These damn seasonal workers living high in their plaster towers earning nickels upon nickels while the rest of us look on from the sidelines wondering when it’ll be our turn. I won’t stand for this. Cut their pay 30% more.

I guess this means Toots Sweets won't be open for soft serve at 10:05am on Opening Day.

Also worth noting - simply maintaining inflation parity with $15/hr in 2020 would require $18.36/hr this season. maintaining parity with $20/hr in 2020 would mean paying $24.50 this season. So $15/hr this season is the equivalent of a ~39% pay cut relative to $20/hr in 2020, and an ~18% cut relative to $15/hr. That's pretty terrible.

So I'll revise my previous comment - I would expect a decrease in staff quality, and therefore worse operations throughout the park.

I hope to be wrong, of course, but management philosophy like this seems like a race for the bottom.

Business is business. The only thing that matters is profit and accountability to investors. They do not care if the quality of the park and it's services are bad unless the profits go down. If people still come and use their product and spend their money on the product. Why would you want to put more money into it?

Made nearly $20/hour at a part time job (a running store) in Columbus...way back....

Of course they aren't a publicly traded company, but damn that's longer ago than I want to think about and there were no "added expenses" being grifted from my paycheck.

As much as I have loved the park over the years, I can't imagine any potential employee who would also have to pay rent, buy food, etc. in what consistently sounds like crappy living situations finding that wage appealing enough to work there.

Unless your goal was to simply work at Cedar Point (I can see plenty finding that job fun) and not, you know, actually make money. I've heard plenty of awesome stories of great experiences from those of you who have worked there. Only person outside of this realm who I knew worked there went to my school and headlined a couple shows in Live-E in the 90's. She loved the opportunity it gave her (went on to sing on a cruise-line and then actually stayed in the music business), but absolutely hated living there. Just used it as a stepping stone to more musical opportunities.

I suppose it's borderline appealing if you live close enough that you don't actually have to live there and all that extra expense.

Definitely not a good PR headline during the time that college students are thinking about summer jobs.

You get what you pay for, whether it be an employee, a service or merchandise. For the most part the better the wage and benefits, the better the employee, the better the service. The better the service the more you enjoy your best day ever.

the ffej man:

The only thing that matters is profit and accountability to investors.

This is not technically wrong, but good leaders understand that you can't sell a crappy product to people indefinitely. There is no profit without revenue, and there is no revenue without a quality bar being met that encourages people to buy.

The merger is going as planned, sadly.

Appears we got the "Staffing issues" all wrong. They were being paid to much, now I get it!

Jeff:

there is no revenue without a quality bar

I concur. Pour me a drink, and my wallet seems to lose all of its revenue.

While the $5/hr pay cut does suck, it’s not completely reminiscent of the entire compensation package.

Employees will still get affordable housing, free admission, park passes for family and friends, access to reasonably priced employee meals, etc.

A normal retail job where you’re making $15/hr doesn’t come with any additional benefits…Plus at Cedar Point, you’re working so much you don’t have time to spend the money you earn. It’s quite easy to make bank by the end of the season.

It's not so much a question of whether or not it's a decent compensation package relative to other comparable service jobs, more that they have substantially decreased compensation relative to times when they were already struggling to fully staff the park. And that's before factoring in potential reluctance of international workers wanting anything to do with what's going on in the US right now.

Park access and living in a very crappy dorm (that is not free) with 15 people are not worth $5 less per hour.

^ The dorms must have changed since I worked there.

I had 2 roommates. One moved out halfway through the season. So it was just 2 of us and he slept in his gf’s dorm most of the time.

The rooms were spacious, had a landline phone, lockers, heat and a/c and TV hookup.

Sorry to hear they’ve gone downhill since then.

2020TpForSale:

had a landline phone

So you lived there pretty recently???

^nope. 2002! Lol. Sad to hear it's gotten bad. You would have thought they'd make continuous improvements for their employees!

The old Commons apartments that had four bedrooms and 16 to an apartment have been torn down. Commons is just dorm rooms now. Also the Bayside apartments, across the street for Commons, have been renovated. Hopefully conditions have improved.

What is the pay for other jobs with which Cedar Point competes for employees? If those other jobs have reduced/eliminated their "Covid" premiums, CP reducing/eliminating its premiums shouldn't be a significant issue. Competing with pay on the table today not several years back. Could create an issue for Cedar Point if those premiums at other jobs still exist. I don't know the answer to that question.