All of the Orioles’ full-time and year-round part-time employees will be paid through the end of May while the start of the Major League Baseball season is delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, though members of the Baltimore City Council renewed pleas to the organization Tuesday to help stadium concession workers laid off by an outside contractor because of the shutdown.
Major League Baseball will on May 1 waive contract clauses for non-playing personnel that guaranteed full pay to major league and minor league coaching staff, plus front office personnel and baseball operations staff. But a spokeswoman for the Orioles said Tuesday that all full-time and year-round part-time employees in baseball operations and on the business side will be paid through the end of May.
That pledge comes in addition to the $1 million set aside by the Orioles and Major League Baseball for seasonal stadium workers employed by the team. Not included, however, are the concession workers the team contracted through Delaware North that were laid off by the company when games were canceled.
Unite Here Local 7, which represents around 700 of those workers, held a virtual press conference on what would have been Opening Day on March 26 calling for the Orioles to intervene and pay the Delaware North workers who were let go. On Tuesday, 10 members of the Baltimore City Council released a letter to the organization renewing those calls.
The letter, sent by council members Shannon Sneed, John Bullock, Kristerfer Burnett, Mary Pat Clarke, Zeke Cohen, Ryan Dorsey, Bill Henry, Danielle McCray, Sharon Green Middleton and Leon Pinkett III, notes managing partner Peter G. Angelos’ pro-labor tendency in imploring him and the organization to help the impacted workers.
“We are all die-hard Orioles fans and love the team in good times and in bad,“ the council members wrote. “Now, we need the Orioles to support concessions workers at Camden Yards who are incredibly vulnerable to sudden loss of income. If Delaware North will not step up for their employees, Baltimore residents, than [sic] we hope that you will.
“We hope the Orioles will support these workers by continuing to pay Delaware North so that it can pay employees and provide continued health insurance benefits for missed games to help these workers survive in this difficult time.”
A Unite Here Local 7 union representative said that the Orioles did not respond to that March 26 request.
"These are hard times for all of us,” Sneed, who also supported the efforts of the Unite Here Local 7 workers last month, said in a statement. “The COVID-19 pandemic poses a threat not only to our health, but also to our economic well-being. We all have to be in this together and this means checking on Baltimore City residents and even providing extended pay and other resources to the workers of many of our great businesses in Baltimore City. Once this is over, Baltimore will be stronger and better than we have ever predicted.”
“When times are tough like right now with the coronavirus pandemic, we see who the real leaders are – the ones who are not afraid to stand up for what is right,” Jermaine Jones, President of the Metropolitan Baltimore AFL-CIO, said in a statement
“I commend Councilwoman Sneed for taking the lead in speaking up for low wage workers who really need our support to get through this pandemic. I hope that the Orioles and Delaware North will do the right thing.”
The letter from the council members notes that Angelos, whose declining health has meant an increased role in the ownership group for his sons, John and Louis, has “always been a friend to working people and organized labor.”
It notes how he represented working people through his law firm to help ensure their medical bills were paid, refused to field replacement players in the 1994 baseball strike and paid stadium workers for wages lost during the games that were moved or played in front of an empty stadium during the 2015 unrest around the death of Freddie Gray, though Delaware North paid its own employees at that time.
“We call on the Orioles to once again be a leader in our city today and again pay workers while the MLB season is delayed,” the council members wrote.
Through an agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Association, the league and the players have ironed out player compensation through the pandemic as baseball tries to find ways to start up again.
As of Tuesday afternoon, multiple outlets reported that 20 of the 30 major league teams have committed to paying their baseball operations employees in full through May 31.