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The future operator must take back the 50 workers left out of a job
Lotería del Chubut has formally called a public tender for the operation of a casino and an annex gaming room in Esquel, with tender terms that require the future operator to take back, gradually, the roughly 50 workers left jobless when the previous concessionaire shut the venue in March.
The call moves the province from crisis management to market reset, but the property and timing questions mean the doors are unlikely to reopen soon.
Trewelyn S.A. closed the Casino de Esquel on March 25, 2026, indefinitely and without notice, in the most important city of Chubut’s Andean region, and later confirmed the dismissal of its entire staff. Lotería del Chubut, formally the province’s Instituto de Asistencia Social (IAS), reacted on two fronts. In April it arranged, through Esquel’s municipality, financial support for the affected workers and their families as a while legal and union claims proceeded. In parallel it began drafting a new tender. Its president, Ramiro Ibarra, said no proposal from Trewelyn would be accepted, noting the company had paid the licence fee for its Puerto Madryn casino but not for Esquel, and told workers in June that operators were already interested and that he was meeting several in Buenos Aires. Esquel’s mayor, Matías Taccetta, pushed for the clause bringing workers back, which now sits in articles 14 and 14 bis of the tender terms. Ibarra has said hiring will be progressive, following the new venue’s operational needs.
The tender documents contemplate gaming tables, but his initial recommendation was a slot-centred
model, because table games carry higher operating costs. That is a pragmatic choice that also tends to produce smaller, leaner rooms, and may shape which operators bid.
The former casino’s premises belong to Trewelyn and have been embargoed by the workers as security for their severance claims, which complicates any plan to reuse them. Sebastián Pérez Rienzi, an ex-employee acting as the group’s spokesman, told local outlet ADN Sur that companies are interested, but that finding or building a new venue would take at least a year. Ibarra had earlier estimated six months to reopening, so the timeline has already stretched. Ibarra himself has cautioned that, after a tender and an award, securing a building takes time.
On October 6, a ruling favoured 36 workers represented by the Sindicato de Empleados de Comercio, ordering Trewelyn to pay March salaries with interest, with no further appeal available. Eight others are represented by lawyer Martín Iturburu; the rest chose not to pursue claims. Even so, workers say they haven’t received cash. The provincial government has pledged support for the ex-employees, and in August the Legislature approved a request for information to the Superior Court of Justice on Trewelyn cases. As Pérez Rienzi put it, the pace of courts and the province isn’t the pace of workers’ needs.
For a land-based sector that has struggled to attract bidders elsewhere in the region, Chubut’s approach offers a template: a public regulator retaining control of the concession, writing the labour obligation into the tender, and courting operators before the call. Whether bidders appear will hinge on the venue.
