Finland’s Veikkaus gambling monopoly will lay off up to 800 staff in January while the country is being shamed as the only remaining European Union country clinging to a state-run monopoly model.  

On Thursday, Veikkaus announced that the ‘cooperation negotiations’ it launched with its retail staff earlier this month had concluded with plans to begin laying off up to 800 betting employees starting early in the new year. The layoffs are slated to last no longer 90 days, provided Finland can regain some control over its COVID-19 infection rate. 

Veikkaus director of channels and sales Jari Heino said the layoffs would target staff “for whom we cannot reasonably arrange other suitable work or training.” Heino said Veikkaus would utilize paid leave to reduce the number of redundancies. 

The layoffs will mirror the pandemic’s spread across Finland’s 20 hospital districts. Once a district signals that infections are under control, Veikkaus will reopen its local branded arcades and its decentralized slots network – restaurants, service stations, other retail stores – and staff in those districts will return to work.