We want to send a big “thank you” to everyone who was able to attend today’s Town Hall. We appreciate your support, patience, and continued engagement as we do our very best to navigate through this crisis together. You’ll find a few key updates from the event below.
Key Announcements
We hope that by now, every single one of you have submitted for your unemployment benefits. The Unemployment Insurance fund is a state fund that all employers pay into. You are entitled to an employment benefit, ranging from $40 to $450 weekly, that calculates to approximately 40-50% of your best quarter of pay in the past year. Of course, for some of you, this may not be sufficient to cover all of your bills. This is where we have been looking for solutions that the company can provide. Please be reminded that your regularly scheduled paycheck is still on the way on March 20 for hours you have already worked through March 12.
We will immediately be committing $2 million in assistance to our employees and their families across Knighted companies.
We are being careful to provide assistance to our team members without interfering with the benefits received from the state and federal government. We also are looking into ways that you can receive assistance with minimal tax obligations. Our immediate goal is to get every single person in our company to at least 60-70% of what they were earning before. We will be spending the next several days working out the way to get this assistance out to you in a way that is most beneficial for all of you. Many of our corporate employees have been working around the clock to keep basic functions of the company running, and have agreed to take a reduction in pay to contribute to this $2 million fund. Please stay tuned for additional updates as we work out the details.
More Updates
- Your company-sponsored health benefits (medical, dental, vision) will continue, despite casino shutdowns or an EDD claim. Additionally, if you were actively on payroll prior to the start of the shutdown (not on a leave of absence), then any of the payments associated with these benefits that are typically deducted from your paychecks will be waived without a lapse in coverage for the pay period ending March 26 and for the duration of the temporary shutdown, until further notice.
- If you are currently enrolled in any voluntary benefits through Trustmark, please be reminded that those are employee-owned (meaning, you own them and there isn’t any portion of sponsorship from Knighted). You will continue to be responsible for payroll deductions for those plans during the shutdown period (meaning, Knighted cannot sponsor or waive your deductions associated with those plans a this time). We are committed to keeping our plans compliant, however, if there are any changes to legislative compliance requirements regarding these plans, we will let you know.
- Additionally, please note that for any commuter benefits you may have through Discovery (transit and parking), you will continue to be responsible for the cost of your contributions through the shutdown periods, however, you can cancel or modify contributions to these plans at any time.
- You will continue to accrue PTO as normal for each pay period throughout the temporary shutdown period.
- Given the unprecedented circumstances, all of our employees will start at a clean attendance state when the casino has reopened and it is time to return to work.
For those of you who were unable to attend, you can find a link to a recording of the event here. We will also be holding more Town Hall gatherings as events unfold. We are also working to update our FAQs with more answers to the questions you all have submitted. Find them HERE.
Thank you Knights. Take care of yourselves and each other.