Giants in pay dispute with ballpark employees

The state Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the Giants must pay security guards and other ballpark employees as soon as the baseball season ends.

The Giants consider the guards regular employees and pay them every two weeks during the season, including a final payment within two weeks after the end of the season. George Melendez, a security guard at AT&T Park since 2005, said in a lawsuit that he became unemployed at the end of each season and didn’t think he should have to wait to be paid.

He invoked a California law requiring immediate pay on the day an “intermittent” employee is “discharged.”

A state appeals court ruled in October that the ballclub was entitled to take the dispute to arbitration under its contract with the guards’ union. The state’s high court set that ruling aside Wednesday and unanimously granted review of Melendez’s suit, with a hearing to be scheduled later.

His lawyer, Dennis Moss, said Melendez is seeking to expand his suit to a class action on behalf of several hundred Giants employees, including groundskeepers, ushers, ticket sellers and other security guards.

“The purpose of the law is to help people who are unemployed,” Moss said. He said Melendez and other ballpark workers are effectively “laid off at the end of the baseball season” and shouldn’t have to wait as long as two weeks to get their last paycheck.

Under the state law, he said, an employer who fails to pay a laid-off worker immediately must pay him or her double for every day of delay.

Melendez drew support from state Labor Commissioner Julie Su, whose lawyer said in a court filing that California labor laws cannot be “waived by private contract.”

Jack Bair, the Giants’ executive vice president and general counsel, said Thursday the suit was unfounded.

“I doubt our employees would consider themselves discharged in between home stands or after the season,” he said. “And in Melendez’s case, he worked every pay period during and after the season.”

In response to the suit, the Giants said security guards do not turn in their uniforms or badges when the season ends, remain on the payroll and are paid for working at special events during the offseason.

In an Oct. 17 ruling, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco said federal labor law requires arbitration of workplace disputes that depend on an interpretation of a union contract.

In this case, the court said, Melendez’s employment status is defined by the Giants’ contract with the Service Employees International Union, which classifies “regular” employees as those who work at least 1,700 hours in a year and implies that they are employed year-round. That means the dispute over season-end payment must be resolved by arbitration rather than in the courts, Justice Stuart Pollak said in a 3-0 decision.

The state’s high court said Wednesday it will decide whether a guard’s employment status is defined by the union contract or by state law.

The case is Melendez vs. San Francisco Baseball Associates, S245607.