Six Flags today filed a notice with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it would reduce its full-time workforce by 10 percent.
The layoff will affect approximately 240 employees. Six Flags said that it expects to pay approximately $1.5 million in severance costs in the third quarter of 2020 with another $3 million in the fourth quarter. Those costs include severance payments as well as outplacement services. The company said that the layoffs are part of its "transformation productivity initiatives."
More details are to come in the company's quarterly investor conference call, on October 28. New Six Flags President and CEO Mike Spanos tipped changes in the company's most recent quarterly call, when he promised "a fundamental review of our business model with the goal of becoming a more agile, consumer-centric, and technology-savvy organization."
Parts of that effort included eliminating management redundancies between parks and corporate headquarters and finding cost reductions by standardizing purchasing across the chain, which could have contributed to today's announced layoffs.
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Sadly Six Flags full time employees were way overworked and underpaid to begin with. A park like SFGAm/SFGAdv each department has like 2-3 full time employees and those are huge parks with very high attendance, imagine trying to run a massive operations or food service business like that and everyone else being hired help that has to be interviewed, hired, and trained every year.
Also sadly most of the full time employees at these parks were maintenance which as we know with SF was also massively under funded to begin with as well.
5.4 flags?
Do you guys seriously think that the employees that got let go, were in the parks themselves?!?
These are OBVIOUSLY corporate employees.
OBVIOUSLY that assumption is wrong. Many of the employees let go did work in the park. The company had to trim to remain viable. It is always a hard decision to make. Times like these make operating lean a necessity.
My linkedin feed is now getting many people who were laid off from Six Flags from their jobs in the parks.
When will they trim the executive team - of course they are “critical” to the operations
All theme park companies have laid off many executives. Look at Phil Holmes, probably the second most tenured and famous executive in WDW history behind George Kalogridis. People don't just decide to retire at 49 years without finishing the job and getting that 50 year statue.
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Can't say shocked. Great America in Illinois has been closed this entire year so big hits all around for the company.