WORKERS STRUGGLE
Financial support lacking
For Debra Gow-Kennedy, working at Coors Field is a family affair. Both she and her husband are Aramark employees, the former a cashier and the latter a cook. Three more family members also work for the concession company at the stadium.
But with the major league season indefinitely postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Gow-Kennedy and her family are struggling financially. As a few of approximately 800 full- and parttime Aramark employees who work at Coors Field, baseball’s shutdown has left Debra’s family without paychecks for the foreseeable future.
“We’re basically stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Gow-Kennedy, 58, of Thornton. “My husband and I had to go to the pawn shop to pawn a bunch of stuff to try and cover some bills. To cover groceries, we’re going to food banks. It’s getting really, really tough.”
Both Gow-Kennedy and her husband suffer from autoimmune diseases, meaning taking another job with one of the few businesses hiring right now, like a grocery store, is out of the question. The financial limbo Gow-Kennedy and other Aramark workers at
Coors Field are in comes despite the $30 million relief package set forth by MLB a few weeks ago to help stadium workers, with $1 million contributed by each club.
At Coors Field, there are three primary entities employing workers: Event Services (aka guest services, the employees who usually wear purple), Argus (the security service company) and Aramark. Only Event Services workers are getting paid right now with money from MLB’s package.
According to an internal company memo sent out to Event Services employees March 19 and obtained by The Denver Post, the club is providing a wage assistance program for those workers through the month of April. That first month of guaranteed assistance is not lost on the hundreds of concession workers who are waiting on unemployment benefits to come through.
“The whole thing definitely makes us feel like they don’t care about us ‘little guys’,” Gow-Kennedy said.
The Rockies and Aramark did not respond to requests for comment for this story, although Aramark CEO John Zillmer addressed the company’s response to the pandemic in a statement on Thursday that included the promise of “a dedicated staffing center to provide temporary opportunities within our company.”
“I have had to make some incredibly hard, near-term decisions that will enable us to protect the maximum number of jobs and allow our valued team members to return to Aramark as quickly as possible,” Zillmer said in the statement.
Meanwhile, the Rockies continue to pay all full-time and parttime club employees in addition to the wage assistance program for those with Event Services. As part of MLB’s commitment to support minor league baseball, the Rockies are giving each of their farm players $400 a week through May 31.
Throw in a $100,000 donation by first baseman Daniel Murphy to help support minor league families in need, plus another $100,000 donation by him to the “Feed The Rockies” fundraiser, and it’s hard to argue the team isn’t doing its part during the pandemic.
Even so, Aramark employees such as Eugenia Mays, a cook who has worked at Coors Field for 16 seasons, believes the onus is on the team, not her company, to make sure all stadium employees — from guest services, to concessions, to security and beyond — are taken care of during the shutdown.
The Rockies were valued at $1.225 billion last April, per Forbes, while Aramark, a national corporation, did $16.2 billion in revenues last year.
“The Colorado Rockies are the umbrella for Aramark and all the other smaller contractors up under them,” said Mays, 62, of Aurora. “So they need to step up and take care of their people. They need to take care of us — we are the ones that make the stadium go.”
Other teams around baseball are doing what Mays is asking.
Within Colorado’s division, the Giants’ emergency fund will benefit all stadium workers, even those employed by third-party vendors such as Aramark. Also, about 2,000 employees are expected to apply for a one-time, $500 grant from the team. And on Tuesday, the Padres announced they’re contributing $100,000 to the workers of Delaware North, the company that staffs Petco Park’s concession stands.
But in Denver, Mays — who like many of her Coors Field associates also works for Aramark at Pepsi Center — said she still feels like Aramark employees “got hit in the head with a brick” amid a shutdown with no promised assistance. Josef Card, a bartender who has worked at Coors Field for 14 seasons, feels much the same way.
Card, 49, lives in Wheat Ridge with his 92-year-old mother. Like Gow-Kennedy, he can’t get a regular job right now due to concerns about coronavirus, which he does not want his at-risk mother exposed to.
“Money is limited, so we’re doing peanut butter and jelly sandwich time around here,” Card said. “Anybody and everybody that can help out should — the people with the deep pockets, whether that’s Aramark, the Monforts or the Rockies organization as a whole. It’s time for everybody to step up for everybody. But my gut feeling is, we’re probably going to be on our own.”
Mays said the ill-will festering between the club and the struggling Aramark workers which staff its games could lead to many of those loyal workers, some of whom have worked at the stadium for over a decade like herself, to seek other employment once baseball, and life, return to normal.
“I’m cheering them on to do the right thing,” Mays said. “Because if you want to just pay your people, then (there’s a chance) you open that stadium with just your people. And good luck with that.”