Labor & Employment Law

Stadium Workers Have Stake in Football Talks

By James Parks

If National Football League owners lock out the players next season, it will hurt more than just the players. Think about the concession workers at the stadium, parking attendants, clean-up crews and other folks whose livelihoods depend on having a steady stream of fans in the seats on Sunday afternoons.

In a new video, members of UNITEHERE!, which represents more than 25,000 concession workers at 58 stadiums across the country, tell why they support the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) in their negotiations with team owners.

For Keith Strong, who works at Detroit?s Ford Stadium, it?s about community. If the owners lock out the players, he says,

it will be hurting us, be hurting the economy and it will be hurting everyone who lives in Detroit.

The owners terminated the collective bargaining agreement with the NFLPA a year early, claiming they were losing money. In negotiations that have lasted more than a year, the owners continue to threaten a lockout and make demands for more work for less pay. In addition, there is no guaranteed health care for players who are injured and players must play for three seasons before they are eligible for only five years of post-career health care.

Says Barbara Koziak, a concession worker at New York Giants Stadium:

This is where we all work. This is what pays the bills. Whatever happens to them [the players] happens to us. If they?re not playing we?re not working.  

The players and stadium workers have the full support of the union movement. In individual letters to each NFL team owner, the three top AFL-CIO officers said  a conservative estimate is that a lockout would cost thousands of jobs and cause more than $140 million in lost revenue in each NFL city. They strongly urged the owners to think about the stadium workers, hotel and restaurant workers, and “thousands of other working people who support [your team] as dedicated employees and fans.”

The bottom line is that players and stadium workers want the same things, says Bobby McCall, a suite attendant at San Francisco?s Candlestick Park.

[The players] are fighting for the same things we are for their families. They want to be able to retire, to live comfortably, and go to the hospital and get treated.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on September 18, 2010 (boomark / email).