Carolina Hurricanes Address the Payment of Staff Through Crisis

The Coronavirus crisis has not been easy on anyone, but the Carolina Hurricanes have taken steps to protect their employees while balancing the business side.

The Coronavirus has brought the world to a grinding halt. It has put the NHL on a hiatus as well as other sports events, concerts, and any other mass gathering. That means that there is no more income for big teams like the Carolina Hurricanes.

That places businesses like sports teams in a conundrum of how to pay their employees. Both part-time and full-time employees have an expected paycheck that helps them get through these tough times, especially now.

There has been some back and forth on if and how the team will pay them. Earlier the team, including contributions from the players, Tom Dundon, and the Carolina Hurricanes Foundation have managed to come together and figure out a way to pay part-time employees for lost wages they would have gotten at PNC during games.

The lingering problem was the much higher paid full-time staff, who can only do so much for the team from isolation, especially a team that isn’t drawing in much money from the usual sources such as gate revenue or sponsorships.

Today the team announced a plan to address how the team and Tom Dundon ensure to pay them through the crisis:

This plan, while only good until June 7th, a little over two months from now, ensures that not only do all the full-time staff get their pay during that time, either from the team directly or from unemployment, combined with organization provided bonuses but more importantly, they all receive their healthcare benefits.

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In a crisis like this, that just might be the single more important thing for them to have if they get nothing else out of the deal. Luckily they will get more than just healthcare benefits and the team seems to have managed to ensure that everyone is getting paid what they earned normally through the years.

The only concern is the heavy leaning on government funds to pay these players. Dundon is valued at over a billion dollars, surely he shouldn’t need to rely so much on government funds to help pay his employees? While that statement is true, there may not be enough cash assets for Tom to pay all his employees for the unforeseeable future, and doing this may help stretch the buck so to speak until the season returns.

It’s not a perfect plan, but it’s better than no plan. At the end of the day, let’s hope this crisis goes by quickly and we can return to a normal healthy life full of hockey, laughter, and the shrill of a ref’s whistle.