Summertime Workers Needed in Tahoe : Casinos Hang Out ‘Help Wanted’ Signs

Lake Tahoe-area hotel-casinos are looking forward to a lucrative summer season but are scrambling to fill hundreds of jobs, most of them offering low pay and difficult working hours.

Casino officials, however, hope the glamour and excitement of working in a neon-lit gambler’s world and the potential to double modest wages with tips will attract enough young adults--many of them California college students--to handle the summer crowds.

The recreational opportunities available in the Lake Tahoe area are also being touted. “Most jobs, you put in eight hours only to go home and stare at four walls,” reads a recent promotion co-sponsored by the four major Stateline, Nev., casinos.

“At Lake Tahoe, you go home and head for the beach to work on your suntan, or break out the fishing pole and head for a nearby stream, or get out the hiking boots and head for the forest.

“These resorts are offering more than a 9-to-5 job. Here, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the work schedules are as varied as the activities available.”

500 Jobs at One Hotel

John Packer at Harrah’s Tahoe, one of the “Big Four” hotel-casinos just across the state line from California, said there were about 500 summer positions at his hotel alone.

About 600 jobs were offered by Harrah’s, Caesar’s Tahoe, High Sierra and Harvey’s Resort.

“There are jobs available for nearly anyone that has an interest in working and is good with the public,” Packer said, “but the number of applicants is down from past summers.”

Most casino jobs, he admitted, pay “just over” minimum wage.

“But, this being a service industry, there are substantial tips.”

Joe Specht just down the street at the smaller Del Webb’s High Sierra said that there were about 150 vacancies on his staff and that not all of them would be filled in time for the summer crowds.

“We’re just going to have to do the best we can,” he said. “We’ll work a lot of overtime.”

Most of the workers needed to be 21 or older, Packer said, but “there are what we call ‘back-of-the-house’ jobs, like in the kitchen or in maintenance, where they don’t have to be.”

Other than that, Packer said, all that was required is a willingness to work and the ability to “maintain our high standards of service.”

“This is an opportunity to enjoy some of the best recreational opportunities while working up here in paradise,” he said.

Specht said the combination of a relatively small resident labor pool and lack of affordable rental housing aggravates the problem.

“One of the reasons we go after college students” he said, “is because they can get together, pool their resources and share. With the different shifts they don’t all have to live at the same place at the same time.”

Specht said the casinos have the same problem every year at this time.

“We do pretty well in the winter,” he said, “but summertime is ‘it’ in Tahoe.”

Full-Time Staff Augmented

Students and teachers traditionally “swell the ranks” at the hotel-casinos, augmenting the full-time staffs of dealers, change people, waiters, cocktail waitresses and keno runners.

They are needed.

Hotel occupancy “hovers right around 100%” all summer at the major resorts, Packer said, and while some gambling centers have reported little or no growth in recent years, the Lake Tahoe area reported a 13% increase in gaming revenues during the third quarter of fiscal 1987.

Packer also said that while the area is short on affordable housing, the casinos do the best they could to help by operating referral services to help summer workers find summer crash pads.