Rockets Owner Tillman Fertitta's Comments About Furloughing Employees Are a Sick Joke

Some owners just don’t get. Houston Rockets head honcho Tillman Fertitta, who oversees a restaurant, hotel, and casino empire as part of his vast portfolio of holdings, made the wrong kind of headlines when he furloughed 45,000 of his employees across multiple businesses as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. And his explanation for the move was puzzling at best.

Furloughing isn't firing; it involves employees going unpaid without losing their jobs in hopes of a future return to normalcy. Furloughed workers can apply for and receive unemployment benefits. Fertitta, a billionaire, explained the decision on Fox News this week: “You are doing your people a favor if you get them furloughed first, because they they’re the first to the unemployment line," he said.

Translation: "I won't take care of tens of thousands of my own people despite the fact that I'm worth over $4 billion, but don't worry, I'm actually a genius businessman who totally did them a favor."

Sheesh. Come on, dude.

It is enough to leave all these workers with zero pay in the midst of a global pandemic, but to turn around and go on national TV and insist that he's doing "pretty damn good" while so many suffer is a travesty. Instead of making legitimate sacrifices in order to help his employees keep their salaries, he's coming off as a 21st century Scrooge.

With enough luck, Fertitta will reconsider some of these decisions, as livelihoods (and lives themselves) hang in the balance here and now. A billionaire of incredible means allowing even a single employee's family to go broke or hungry while the world is reeling is a tragedy -- and a preventable one.