Dear LAZ Family Members,
As I write to you today, my first thoughts are for the health and safety of every LAZ Family member and all your loved ones. We are all living during an unprecedented time. Never in all our years of business have we experienced such a sharp and sudden decline in our nation’s business. Revenues are quickly reaching historic lows and we have already experienced the closing of locations.
Many cities and states have declared a state of emergency and are now ordering mandatory closure of bars, restaurants, movie theaters, gyms and other gathering places in order to contain and curtail the spread of the Coronavirus through social distancing. We must all do our part in abiding by these regulations so that together we can flatten the curve of this virus and heal our nation as soon as practically possible. I urge you all to please adhere closely to our federal, state and local government initiatives.
Our company and the entire parking industry is being affected in real time by this crisis and we are not alone – it is affecting travel, hotels, hospitals, airports, stadiums, restaurants, theme parks, arenas and most small and large service businesses. In the coming days and weeks ahead, we will be forced to make some difficult choices to temporary furlough many of our employees which will result in an unprecedented reduction of staff and scheduled hours until our business can return to normalized levels. I want to make it clear that our goal is for this to be as temporary as possible! We will do everything within our power to ramp back up as quickly as possible.
Our founding partners and I are 100% committed to doing everything we can to respond to this changing environment and protect our company for the long- term benefit of everyone at LAZ. For this reason myself, Jeff Karp, Michael Harth, and Mike Kuziak have voluntarily decided to not take any pay for the next 90 days and establish a $1,000,000 Employee Relief Fund in order for affected LAZ Family members to apply for a grant of up to two weeks of pay. There will be no expectation of repayment of this grant and the money will be disbursed by our relief fund team as fairly and as quickly as possible. This fund will be administered through a Relief Fund Committee within our People and Culture Department.
As I mentioned earlier, we are in unprecedented times and I want to assure everyone that we have a dedicated team of leaders throughout the nation on a 24/7 schedule working tirelessly to protect our jobs and the future of our company. While we are fortunate to have a company that has the resources to withstand this crisis, it is going to also take enormous government intervention to bridge the financial gap that is being created and help our nation’s workforce receive higher unemployment benefits during this crisis. I have been and will continue to be in contact with the highest levels in government in order to advocate for our people, our company and members of the entire parking industry.
I’d like to ask for your understanding of the extremely difficult choices we are being forced to make with these labor reductions. It literally breaks my heart to have to do this and I want to assure you with every ounce of commitment in my body, that both myself and my partners promise to do everything humanly possible to navigate our way out of this situation as a quickly as possible. Our Senior Leaders within each region as well as our all of our Human Resource Business Partners will be in touch over the coming days to discuss our next steps and what actions we need to take to adapt to this fast moving situation.
Finally, I want to thank all of you for doing your part. With our Never Ever Give Up attitude and the unwavering spirit and strong culture of our organization, together we will fight through this crisis and protect our people and company for decades to come.
BIG Virtual Hugs,
Al LAZ