News: Labor challenges force Cedar Point to adjust operating calendar

vwhoward said:

Those people in the union (and I know this from personal experience), have way more benefits than just their wage. They have job protection, health benefits, a pension or at least a 401k match, vacation time, sick time, paid holidays, etc.

And all of that compensation has been devalued with this move. So to hell with them I guess?

It is not "on the side of the business" to point out the negative consequences of this.

When I started working at age 14, I was paid $4.25/hr, which translates to $7.96/hr today, or ~9.5% lower than Ohio's current minimum wage for large businesses, and ~17.5% lower than Michigan's current minimum wage. So the lowest earners make more today than when I started working. So it stands to reason that the issue isn't so much how much the lowest tier jobs are paying, but instead how many people are in those jobs today compared to the past.

With that in mind, raising minimum wage doesn't help in the long run, since if that's suddenly what those jobs are worth, anyone making more just got a pay cut ranging from moderate to huge, considering that much of the increased labor costs get passed on to the end product. Inflation 101.

I get that there's an income issue in the US, but simply doubling (or whatever) minimum wage is not a solution to the problem.

https://twitter.com/cedarpoint/status/1396865274066919424

Things do not seem to be going very well...

I suspect the it’s the Canadians planning the invasion. They are not happy with no park 2 years in a row.

I'm wondering if CP offered a "Returning Seasonal" bonus, if it would help with the annual staffing issues they have. We all know that next year once unemployment checks and travel restrictions are over, that CP will drop the pay back to normal. So here's what I would propose....

1st year of service: Basepay + .50/hr at end of contract
2nd year of service: Basepay + .50/hr + .50/hr at end of contract
3rd year of service: Basepay + $1/hr + .75/hr at end of contract
Etc.

They just need some sort of incentive to bring people back year after year. As a former employee, yes, free admission is a great perk. But, to be honest, most employees want to be as far away from the park as possible on their days off. (which are far and few between)

Wrong. Unemployment benefits are not the problem. Season staffing is college kids, high school kids and international folks. None of those people are getting unemployment.

That’s something that quite a lot of people don’t seem to get, especially on Facebook. Literally every other comment is someone blaming the unemployment payments, which has literally nothing to do with the age groups that Cedar Point typically recruits.

I'm not sure if anyone else noticed, but college and high school was really weird this past year.

There is a natural rhythm to how students get recruited; job fairs, posters on message boards and in other places kids go to hunt for summer work, and word-of-mouth recruiting from internship directors and other students.

Job fairs didn't happen.

No one was on campuses to see the posters (and they weren't there anyway).

No outsiders could step on campus grounds.

Thanks to hybrid and remote learning, social interaction was at a crawl.

So not only was the international pipeline completely cutoff, but the ability to effectively recruit college kids was also slowed to a trickle; certainly not cutoff completely but certainly compromised.

With all due respect, can someone explain to me why you don't think a free unemployment check is preventing college students and high school students from applying?

The Pandemic Unemployment program GREATLY widened those eligible for unemployment. In fact, in some states, you were eligible for PUA if you felt that your job wasn't safe enough or taking enough precautions for you to work. A lot of college students and high school students are gig workers (shipt, door dash, instacart, etc.) Gig workers became eligible for PUA under the 2nd stimulus bill. So not only were they collecting their state minimum, but they are also collecting the federal $300, averaging most likely $450 a week for sitting on a couch.

By the way, it's great to see a ton of OG's on here! I cleared my cache one day, and lost my password for PB. I didn't have my old email address anymore, so I couldn't reset my password.

-- campfreak06

It is good to see you back, Campfreak; seems like just yesterday we were at the commercial shoot for Shoot the Rapids. Glad we didn't drown.

So, all valid points. Yes, college students could get benefits through the pandemic relief, but there are a few roadblocks;

1) In general, the person's job went away due to Covid-19, a place of employment shut down due to Covid-19, or a job they applied for went away due to Covid-19. Totally plausible.

2) The students need to be aware that they can actually apply.

3) The student needs to do the leg work and apply for the benefits.

The biggest roadblocks are 2 and 3.

Ah yes! The Shoot the Rapids commercial. I wasn't visible in the actual commercial. But I was front and center on the CP website banner for several months that year!

2020TpForSale said:

With all due respect, can someone explain to me why you don't think a free unemployment check is preventing college students and high school students from applying?

I don't disagree that it's a factor, but I don't think it's the sole or even main factor. Unemployment in Ohio has been at 4.7% since March, which is the same as it was pre-pandemic and, more importantly, pre-stimulus/enhanced unemployment benefits.

I certainly agree that the money dumped into the economy has had an effect overall, but I think the impact is being exaggerated. There are a lot of factors at play here.

There may have been a shift in where people are employed due to people leaving the work force so that more people who may have been working service industry jobs may have moved into something else. I'm getting the impression lots of people who were eligible to retire but were in no hurry before have decided to go ahead and do it leaving positions open. I think the lack of full time school for many has definitely been a factor. Around here each district is doing their own thing and some have been partially open but closed for Fall and winter and then back to partially open. If I was a parent with young kids and on unemployment with kids that may or may not be in school based on the whims of the local school district I doubt I would be in any hurry to find a new job. My youngest graduates this week so thankfully I don't have to worry about that. I think unemployment is definitely affecting the lack of available workers but there is a lot more to it. My own extended family is currently a weird mixture of unemployment, jobs that might come back, jobs that are definitely gone, people who went to work that normally didn't for seasonal positions, people who have reentered the work force after being out for a long time and people who have worked more hours through all of this with no break. There's a lot of complicated stuff going on, the special unemployment benefits are part of it but not the whole picture.

I'm in healthcare and the past year has been... fun, we'll just leave it at that, but even here it's interesting the shifts around in job demand. Definitely there's a lot of docs that kept putting off retiring that are finally retiring, and we've had trouble staying fully staffed with a lot of rumors that the bigger hospital systems in Cleveland keep making better offers money-wise to our would-be candidates in regards to short-to-medium term demand that our place just hasn't been able to compete with. Aside from that, the hospital has been struggling to staff housekeeping, which I can't necessarily blame people for not wanting to do for a number of reasons, but aside from that it's about what you'd expect for a hospital coming out of a pandemic.

What's been curious to observe around town is practically everybody has "Now hiring!" banners out which I haven't seen to this degree in eons. Fast food joints are one thing, but what's been curious to me has been the number of manufacturing places advertising it, whether it's the small casting facility down the road from me or Rubbermaid putting up billboards on the interstate. I'm not super attuned to the ebbs and flows of predominantly union workplaces, but I'm curious how much of this demand from the manufacturing side is either to recoup workers that were let go when demand crashed with the initial covid shutdowns, or to replace union old-timers who either also finally retired, got covid, or otherwise aren't sticking around.

This is second and third-hand information both from around where I'm from and via friends in the Detroit area, but I always was told by people my age that a lot of the union manufacturing gigs that paid well/had good benefits etc. basically were strangleheld by the aforementioned union old-timers with no easy point of entry for someone entering the workforce or what have you. Again, this is total hearsay, but considering the "older workers finally deciding to retire" factor seems to be present in pretty much every field, I wonder how much the trickle-up effect of folks actually getting access to jobs like that is pulling people away from the service industry.

Sorry, that was a bit of a ramble, but just sort of throwing in my two cents of observations as well.

Restaurants and fast food seem to be doing the worst when it comes to staffing. On Sunday night, on my way home from the park I wanted to stop at the Wendy's in Huron to get a Frosty. I pull in there and the place is already closed. Sign said they closed at 8 due to staffing shortage. There is even one restaurant not far from me that had to close altogether due to no workers.

And I was reading somewhere, don't know if it was here, another site or on FB but one person who worked at a manufacturing facility said that they barely got any applications while the unemployment was being given out . Then as soon as it was announced that the looking for work requirement was being reinstated, they suddenly started getting a bunch of applications at that point.

That Crazy Dan said:

...what's been curious to me has been the number of manufacturing places advertising it...

Yeah, it has been absolutely crazy how many signs there are begging for help in manufacturing in the Metro Detroit area. But I think that was trending up prior to the pandemic, but that's purely anecdotal based on my visits to various manufacturers, etc., which is pretty regular.

...I always was told by people my age that a lot of the union manufacturing gigs that paid well/had good benefits etc. basically were strangleheld by the aforementioned union old-timers with no easy point of entry for someone entering the workforce or what have you.

...I wonder how much the trickle-up effect of folks actually getting access to jobs like that is pulling people away from the service industry.

I'm not an expert, but do work at a tier 1/2 automotive supplier in Metro Detroit, and we're a UAW shop, so I have some anecdotal insight. One factor is the generation-long push toward higher ed and away from "blue collar" jobs. Anyone around my age and indeed quite a bit younger has heard nothing other than "go to college if you want a good life," so, that's what most kids did.

On the demand side, it's true that there's a generation that has either retired in the last decade or is set to retire in the next ~5 years, with a dearth of skilled tradespeople to replace them.

And the thing is, there is a ton of opportunity to make a very, very good life as a skilled tradesperson. Hell, had I known then what I know now, I probably would not have gone to college and instead would have gone into any number of fields that provide exceptional compensation relative to the cost of learning the relevant skill.

So all that said, yeah, I would agree that the pandemic pushed some of those nearly-retired into retirement (AKA "I'm gettin' too old for this s***"). And the already short supply of younger skilled tradespeople combined with the stimulus/UIA has made it even harder to fill those spots. And if we're having trouble getting people to apply to earn, say, $20/hr, no wonder Wendy's is having trouble getting people to work for less than that.

$450/week on unemployment or $600/week for a 40 hr work week. Most people are going to choose the unemployment EVERY time. It's not just about the money, but it's also but the person's time and the physical toll jobs take on our bodies.

...and yes. I agree. Unemployment checks are NOT the only thing causing the staffing issues. Foreign travel restrictions are key as well. Along with a variety of other factors.

Received an email from Cedar Point Resorts this morning regarding our Hotel Breakers booking. We are booked for 3 nights June 14-16. Here is the important part:

During this time, Hotel Breakers will only be available for stays Wednesday night through Sunday night.

You can view the entire Cedar Point operating calendar here.

You have two options with your reservation:

To cancel your reservation and receive a refund, e-mail us at cpresorts@cedarpoint.com.
To check availability for adjusting your dates of stay or re-scheduling for a stay later in 2021, visit reservations.cedarpoint.com. Rate difference will apply. Based on availability, you may adjust your dates by chatting with us online at cedarpoint.com/resorts. Alternatively, you may contact us at 419.627.2106