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Just over four years to the day since it laid off 201 employees at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, arts corporation Meow Wolf will once again cut a high number of positions on Wednesday as part of what CEO Jose Tolosa is calling a “reorganization.”
“There is no easy way to break this news,” Tolosa writes in an internal company email obtained by SFR. “On Wednesday [April 17], Meow Wolf will be announcing that we are cutting expenses by approximately 10% and reducing our workforce in order to right size the business, fund our growth and continue driving our future success.”
Also according to that internal email, the cuts will affect 165 employees across Meow Wolf’s locations in Santa Fe, Texas, Colorado and Nevada. That includes 111 employees from both the exhibition and corporate teams set to lose their jobs, plus an additional 54 bargaining unit positions from the Meow Wolf Workers Collective union in Las Vegas.
Despite that, the internal email reads, “Expansion is still an important part of our business strategy, and these changes will enable us to continue to grow in a way that is smart and sustainable.”
Tolosa also writes that, “Over the past three years, we’ve developed a better understanding of our guests and what we need to staff and support our exhibitions in order to make the most of the growth opportunities ahead, including our Houston location that opens later this year. Saying goodbye to friends and colleagues who have been a big part of Meow Wolf’s success to date will not be easy. We are grateful for their contributions, both creatively and to our community. And we are committed to supporting everyone through this transition as we move forward.”
There is no word on what that potential support might look like as yet.
These layoffs follow high-profile terminations in 2020 that the company initially blamed on the pandemic. At the time, the then-trio of CEOs Jim Ward, Ali Rubinstein and Carl Christensen cited the increasing financial pressures of a post-COVID world, though audio leaked to SFR indicated a sizable chunk of the staff was already going to lose their jobs well before government lockdowns were initiated.
“We knew we were going to hit our financial wall in June,” Ward told staff in May of 2020. “The headlines were these: The company grew too big, too fast, without a clear view about what is truly core to us, what core contributions we must make to our projects and how we should organize our projects.”
Back in the present, Tolosa says in his statement that the company has “been in close communication with the MWWC, our employee union, around these changes,” though the union, which officially formed just two years ago, has claimed the company engaged in unfair labor practices before. Additionally, those 201 employees who lost their jobs in 2020 were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements (that included a non-disparagement clause) to collect their severance.
A union member who spoke anonymously with SFR says that the Meow Wolf Workers Collective plans to make a statement Wednesday but is legally unable to do so until then.
