The Saskatchewan Roughriders are announcing more details in relation to the job cuts made last week in response to COVID-19.
President and CEO Craig Reynolds joined 620 CKRM’s the Sportscage Friday, and says last week was a very difficult time for the organization.
“We had to go through a process in September of really planning for the future and really looking at the organization, and obviously we had a good sense of the financial crisis, but re-looking at numbers and those types of things,” Reynolds said. “Ultimately it lead to unfortunately about 35 percent of our workforce either permanently laid off or temporarily laid off.”
Reynolds says none of the coaching staff members were among the staffing cuts, but many coaches see their contract expire in December.
“We did across-the-board pay cuts, and reduced work weeks in many cases, and our coaches were a part of that, but no, they’re not laid off.”
However, the cuts haven’t stopped fans from supporting the organization throughout the year.
President and CEO Craig Reynolds says fans have done some incredible things this year, including extending their season seats for 2021.
“We’ve had an incredible amount of people become what we call ‘Rider 2020 champions’ where they donated in effect their money to the club — their season ticket money from last year to the club,” Reynolds said. “I can’t tell you how much that makes a massive difference to our financial situation and our cash flow challenge, it was tremendous.
“We’ve (also) had a number of people donate to our foundation, so we can continue to do all of the great community work that we’re proud of and we want to continue to do.”
Reynolds believes a shortened CFL season would have saved some of the positions, but the team simply needed to address staffing expenses moving forward. He adds staffing is the number one expense realized by the Riders every year.
