Ballpark worker bill signed by Newsom
Legislation backed by the San Francisco Giants that would allow pro baseball teams in California to pay ballpark employees two weeks after the end of the season, a timetable challenged in a lawsuit by a Giants security guard, has been signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
SB286 by state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, DLos Angeles, breezed through both houses of the Legislature without a dissenting vote after Durazo introduced it last month. Newsom approved it Wednesday night, and it takes effect in January.
The bill, which also drew support from the Oakland Athletics, Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, arose from a lawsuit filed in 2015 by George Melendez, a security
guard at the Giants ballpark since 2005. The San Francisco Superior Court suit is a proposed class action on behalf of hundreds of guards, ticket vendors, groundskeepers, ushers and other ballpark workers.
The Giants classify them as regular employees who are entitled to be paid every two weeks under state law. But the suit cited a centuryold California law requiring immediate pay when an employee has been “discharged.” Melendez said he becomes unemployed at the end of each season — and probably at the end of each home stand as well — and shouldn’t have to wait two weeks to be paid.
SB286 classifies baseball stadium workers as “events employees” who are “deemed to be employed continuously” until they are fired or quit their jobs. It was originally drafted to apply retroactively and could have derailed Melendez’s suit, but that language was deleted.
The new law “will promote longevity and stability for events employees’ employment and protect their access to benefits according to seniority, including pay increases and job selection,” Durazo said in a statement Thursday.
Jack Bair, the Giants’ executive vice president and general counsel, said when the bill was introduced that it would “lend common sense to this issue and allow for employees to be paid at regular pay periods as has been longstanding practice.” He also said it would have been impossible to pay all ballpark employees immediately at the end of a season or home stand.
Melendez’s lawyer, Dennis Moss, said the new law would not affect his suit for damages under a state law that entitles employees to an extra day’s pay for each day that their wages are improperly delayed. But he said the legislation’s approval of a twoweek waiting period was unfair to ballpark workers.
“People who find themselves out of work need their money right away, especially hourly paid workers who cobble together parttime jobs,” Moss said. He disputed the Giants’ contention that immediate postseason payments would be impossible and said state laws would allow the team up to 72 hours to make such payments to multiple employees.