The Giants have been having a tough year. So have the ballpark workers who serve you garlic fries and hot dogs at Oracle Park. At the beginning of this baseball season the Giants dumped their former food concession contractor, Bon Appetit, and put the infamous “hospitality management” company Aramark in charge. UNITE HERE Local 2 represents over 600 workers at Oracle Park who staff the stadium’s concession stands, clubs and suites. I joined Local 2 in 1976, and have worked at Oracle Park as a cashier since 2013.
We do not know why the Giants brought in Aramark, but it certainly isn’t because of Aramark’s sterling reputation for providing good service or treating their workers well. Earlier this year, for example, the National Park Service terminated Aramark’s contract to provide visitor services at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon as a result of “consistent failures to meet contract requirements.”
Similar problems with Aramark have been reported at Yosemite National Park. Aramark also provides food services to prisons, but have had their contracts terminated at prisons in Michigan and Maryland as a result of “unsanitary conditions,” including infestations of maggots, and serving food that had been thrown in the trash and “nibbled on by rats.”
Aramark ignores our contract
Aramark took over the food concessions at Oracle Park in February. Despite the fact that the Giants have a “successorship agreement” with Local 2 that our collective bargaining agreement must remain in place if and when the Giants change contractors, Aramark refused to even acknowledge our Local 2 contract until the end of June. From February until June, and even now, they instead seem to pick and choose which parts of our agreement they recognize.
According to union documents and allegations shared with 48hills:
Aramark took over the food concessions at Oracle Park in February. Despite the fact that the Giants have a “successorship agreement” with Local 2 that our collective bargaining agreement must remain in place if and when the Giants change contractors, Aramark refused to even acknowledge our Local 2 contract until July. From February until July, and even now, they instead seem to pick and choose which parts of our agreement they recognize.
According to union documents and allegations shared with 48hills:
—Workers who work regularly at the ballpark are supposed to get medical coverage, but Aramark has twice been late [with] making their payments, and has failed to make any medical payments at all for a number of workers, particularly those who also work for Aramark at the Colisuem in Oakland, where the A’s are playing their last games. [Under the contract, health care is month-to-month, that is, a worker who does ten shifts in April qualifies for health care in June. If Aramark doesn’t make the payments, that worker’s health care is in jeopardy.] I have talked to numerous workers who have been without medical coverage at times this season, and others who have had no medical coverage at all.
—We were supposed to get a $1.50 per hour raise at the beginning of April. Aramark gave us 75 cents. A number of workers have also been paid less than the contracted rate for their classification of work. Some Bon Appetit workers were not allowed to work when Aramark took over until weeks into the season. In these times of rampant inflation, that hurts.
—Many workers question whether or not the tip money that guests sign for with their credit and debit cards has been distributed correctly and in full. Aramark has so far ignored a union demand that they give us access to the raw tip data.
—Aramark withheld Local 2 dues money from our paychecks, in accordance with the Local 2 contract, but then held onto that dues money for several weeks before forwarding it to the union. That resulted in many workers getting letters from Local 2 saying that they were behind in their dues. Aramark also deducted dues money from workers who pay their dues directly to the union and had not authorized dues deductions.
The union has demanded an independent audit of Aramark’s payroll procedures, a demand which Aramark has so far ignored.
But these money issues are just the tip of the iceberg.
What is really worrisome is that Aramark has also been seriously understaffing the concession stands, even on busy days, often causing a difficult and dangerous speedup. Yet many workers who are signed up for work have had their shifts cancelled, sometimes only hours before their shift. Staffing out of seniority order has become a problem. Local 2 has a hiring hall, but Aramark rarely calls the hiring hall for workers.
Meanwhile, we have seen a proliferation of non-union workers from various agencies showing up to fill empty slots.
What is going on here?
Calls for a strike
On June 14, more than 250 ballpark workers, at the call of the Local 2 leadership, assembled at the International Longshore and Warehouse Union hall near the ballpark to talk about our problems and plan action. The anger was palpable. Several workers demanded that the union organize a strike. The union officials in charge had some difficulty keeping order at the meeting. But in the end, we planned an action that we hoped would get the full attention of Aramark—and the Giants.
And so on June 28, just before a Giants-Dodgers game, a standing-room-only crowd of over 150 Local 2 workers assembled in our break room and summoned Aramark’s human relations director. We then proceeded to regale the director for nearly an hour with our many grievances about Aramark’s disrespect. There were planned speeches, as well as spontaneous callouts from the ranks, including one worker fighting cancer who spoke passionately about what it has meant to her to have lost her medical coverage.
After this action Aramark finally acknowledged our collective bargaining agreement, and agreed in principle to pay us our full raise. We got our full raise for the first time on our July 24 paychecks. Most workers—but not all—have now gotten retroactive payments for the missing raises. But just four days after our action, Aramark sent out an email to the concession staff thanking us for all our “hard work so far” and that they were going to kick workers out of their regular concession stands and “start rotating staff to various stands” in order to “ensure everyone gets familiar with different locations and our diverse concepts.”
This was announced without any consultation with the union, despite the fact that federal law requires employers to make an attempt to negotiate over such changes in working conditions. Many workers also saw this as retaliation for our June 28 action. In response, the union threatened to file a legal challenge with the National Labor Relations Board. After some delay, Aramark started moving many workers around at the most recent homestand, like pawns on a chessboard, further stoking the fires that are already burning at the ballpark.Many other contract violation issues and grievances remain unresolved.
Where are the Giants?
Through all of this chaos, the Giants have remained mum. They certainly cannot have been ignorant of Aramark’s reputation for ignoring its contractual obligations, nor of Oracle Park workers’ struggles with Aramark.
It has been widely publicized, for example that Aramark’s Crater Lake National Park contract was terminated after Aramark was accused, among many other transgressions, of serving improperly cooked food, operating “unclean kitchens” and failing to properly train food service staff; allowing “major spills” of diesel fuel into Crater Lake and overflows of raw sewage in the park; failing to do routine maintenance of visitor and employee buildings; charging employees hundreds of dollars a month to live in “shabby” and unclean dorms, sometimes without heat or power; failing to report serious visitor injuries; and tolerating sexual assault and sexual harassment of employees. According to one worker, it was a place with “zero policies, zero rules and regulations. It was something out of the Twilight Zone.”
Why would the Giants bring such a company to San Francisco? And why have the Giants remained silent through all the chaos this season?
It would be a safe bet that this is all about money, which is the lifeblood of Major League Baseball in America.
Local 2’s ballpark contract expires on April 1, 2025, at the beginning of the next baseball season. The last time we negotiated a new contract, in 2021, we held a strike vote and were ready to strike during the playoffs. Bon Appetit, our then-employer, buckled and we won a great contract.
Are the Giants looking to roll back our collective bargaining wins, and setting up Aramark to be the bad guy?
For my money, the answer is yes.
In the past, Local 2 has allowed the ballpark contract to expire without a fight. We have then gone several years working with an expired contract, with no raises all that time. We tolerated that in those times of low inflation, but it is doubtful that ballpark workers will tolerate working for a disrespectful company like Aramark with no raises while inflation eats away at our livelihood.
Once upon a time the watchword of the labor movement was NO CONTRACT NO WORK. These days the labor movement is showing more than a few signs of rising militancy and organization—and that includes ballpark workers.
Opening Day next season is April 4, 2025.
Marc Norton joined Local 2 in 1976. He has worked as a dishwasher, steward, cook, and bellman. He has been a cashier at the Giants’ ballpark since 2013. His website is at MarcNortonOnline.wordpress.com.
