1,123 salaried employees at Universal Orlando have been notified they will be losing their jobs before the end of 2020, the resort said in a notice filed with the state of Florida.
In a letter — known as a WARN notice, after the federal labor law requiring notification of mass layoffs — Universal said none of the layoffs involved hourly workers inside the parks.
678 of the workers being let go work at offices at 1000 Universal Studios Plaza near the resort’s two theme parks. Another 373 employees who are being laid off worked at the offices of Universal Creative, the division that designs and develops the company’s theme park attractions.
Scot LaFerté, senior vice president of human resources at Universal, attributed the layoffs to “unprecedented challenges as a direct result of the unforeseen reach of COVID-19” in his letter.
““As a full recovery will take time, the company has had to make very difficult decisions, including reducing some of its workforce,” he wrote.
It’s unclear whether these specific layoffs had been previously reported. The last set of Universal job cuts, reported in early October, also did not include hourly workers, according to Universal Orlando spokesperson Tom Schroder.
The layoffs disclosed to the state are effective between Aug. 24 and Dec. 31, 2020, so it is possible that the state is just now receiving notice of layoffs that were already reported in the media.
Universal has undergone multiple rounds of layoffs since the resort reopened in June. This included unspecified numbers of employees, including hourly workers, in June and July, as well as 2,306 workers at Universal Orlando’s hotels, which are operated in a partnership with Loews Hotels.
In its last quarterly earnings report, Universal’s parent company Comcast reported that the theme park division lost more than $200 million between July 1 and Sept. 30.
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