KNBR
Food-service workers who have been fixtures around Oracle Park want the Giants’ help.
Two-hundred-twenty vendors demonstrated outside the park during Friday’s home against the A’s, marching, chanting, slowing traffic and trying to call attention to their plight during the pandemic.
The game-day employees are not under the Giants’ umbrella, as the Giants are the contractor with a subcontract with Bon Appetit. Bon Appetit recently laid off all of the workers who have become friendly, familiar faces to thousands during baseball seasons when fans can be in the stands.
The Giants had announced they would allocate $1.7 million to all game-day employees in early April. But for workers who have the Giants logo on their shirts at the park, some of whom have worked Giants home games for decades, they expect more.
After the Bon Appetit layoffs, the food-service workers asked for a meeting with the Giants in search of a deal. The Giants declined.
“The Giants are essentially saying: ‘It’s not our responsibility. We are not the employer.’ Legally, that’s true,” said Anand Singh, president of Unite Here Local 2, which organized the demonstration. “They’re absolutely correct. They are not the employer, but they shouldn’t be looking for reasons to hide behind a legal argument. The Giants are the ones with the means. They’re the ones with the power. They have the ability to step in and make this right.”
Within that $1.7 million, the Giants established a hardship grant that provided $500 to each of the food-service workers from Bon Appetit. During a pandemic and without money entering from fans, the team has furloughed about 60 of its own part-time workers.
“We are empathetic during the challenging times that we’re in, but there is no more that we can do,” the team said in a statement to KNBR. “They play a big role in the Giants experience. They’re part of the Giants family and the ballpark family, but they’re not our employees.”
Connie Carliento has been an AT&T/Oracle Park cashier for nine years, has three kids and just learned she had been laid off by Bon Appetit.
“I don’t have money for paying the rent,” Carliento said at the demonstration. “…Some [of us] have been working 40 years for the Giants, and they don’t mind [the workers being laid off]? I said oh my goodness, what’s wrong with the Giants?”
Unless they hear from the Giants, the vendors were planning to demonstrate again Aug. 25 before a home series with the Dodgers.