White Pass & Yukon Route cuts 27 jobs as another dismal summer looms

The world-famous tourist train in Skagway, Alaska, is cutting dozens of jobs.

Twenty-sevenemployees of the White Pass & Yukon Route wererecently sent letters from the company, telling them their positions were being abolished.

Many of those employees were seasonal coach cleaners.

"They're a group of people that work really hard during the summertime cleaning the coach cars thatwe operate during the tour season," saidTory Korn, the company's director of business development.

"If we're not running tours, there's no coach cars to clean."

The job losses come after the Canadian government's recentannouncementof an extension tothe cruise ship ban, until February 2022.

"It's pretty devastating to our business, and we're really concerned about even our ability to reopen for the 2021 season now," Korn says. He's hopeful there might be some limited cruise ship trafficfrom the lower 48 states.

Most of the scenic railway's customersare cruise ship passengers on day trips from Skagway. The train travels as far as Carcross, Yukon, before headingback to Skagway.

Korn says due to the 2020 cruise season being cancelled, many of the railway's now-terminated employees haven't been working since October 2019.

"We did have some obligations under the union contract to call people back at a certain point, but there's just total uncertainty on whether we're going to have a season or not," he said.

Kornis hopeful the U.S. and Canadian governments can work together to allow a limited cruise season out of Seattle which could have some ships travelling to Southeast Alaska.

Fighting to survive

With no tours and no revenue, Korn says the company is just taking steps to survive.

He says White Pass & Yukon Route is looking atthe long term but isn't sure how many seasons it will be able to maintain like this.

Kornhopes there can be some sort of path forward, or "something to allow at leastsome cruise ships to sail out of Seattleif they get the go ahead from Centre of Disease Control," he said.

"So we can salvage something of a season."