With more than 600 of his employees currently out of work due to the coronavirus outbreak, William Hill US CEO Joe Asher has established a foundation to help them—and kicked in his own salary to get the ball rolling.
“I didn’t feel right about continuing to get paid while so many people were out of work,” Asher said. “So I just decided to donate all of my salary to the foundation and encourage everybody else in the company who’s still working to donate what they can. Obviously, people aren’t going to be able to donate all their salary, but everybody can do something, even if it’s 20 bucks. And the response has been great.”
Asher declined to disclose his salary, but said, “I’m a reasonably well-paid individual, and I said at the outset that I’d pay my salary until sports come back.”
William Hill has 114 sports outlets in Nevada and 39 in New Jersey and Iowa. Asher said 255 William Hill employees have continued to work through the shutdown and some of them will follow his example by contributing to the foundation.
“Some people are going to donate percentages of their salaries, some people are going to donate X amount from their paycheck or some flat amount,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “But I think just about everybody’s going to do something.”
William Hill is still paying for health care coverage for the furloughed staff.
