Nariel Green (L) leads fellow Target Field concessions workers in a chant: “Fifty cents won’t pay the rent.”
Got tickets to the Twins’ home game June 22 against the Dodgers at Target Field?
Expect picket lines outside and long lines inside, as concessions workers plan to strike during the opener of a three-game series against the defending World Series champs.
UNITE HERE Local 17 announced the one-day strike outside Target Field this morning. Union officers and rank-and-file members warned fans, the team and its concessionaire, Delaware North Company, that picket lines will go up June 22 unless the sides settle before then.
The bargaining unit brings together about 500 workers in Target Field’s concession stands and premium restaurants. Members voted last month to authorize their negotiators to call a strike, with 81% support.
Union members entered bargaining with Delaware North in April seeking a $20 minimum wage, job protections and a pathway to healthcare benefits for workers at Target Field and other local stadiums.
But in six sessions since then, the union says, management has refused to take those demands seriously.
The two sides are meeting again today, but Local 17 Secretary-Treasurer Sheigh Freeberg said workers’ patience is running out.
“They’ve had our proposals for months,” Freeberg said during a press conference. “We only just got their economic proposal.”
That offer would hold hourly wages flat for some workers and raise others’ by 50 cents. Many Target Field concessions workers earn minimum wage, which is just over $16 per hour in Minneapolis.
Purnell Payne, a bartender at Target Field, said the stadium’s increasing use of nonprofit volunteers to sell concessions raises safety concerns – especially when it comes to alcohol sales.
“Fifty cents won’t pay the rent,” Local 17 member Nariel Green said, leading union supporters in a brief chant.
Green added that Delaware North’s refusal to discuss issues – like faulty equipment, unequal treatment and an increasing reliance on nonprofit volunteers to do union members’ work – shows a lack of respect for the workers who are critical to fans’ experience at the ballpark
“They expect us to show up with a positive attitude when we are treated like second-class citizens,” Green said. “All they have done (in bargaining) is waste our time repeatedly.”
Local 17 has had “minimal” engagement with the Twins about the slow pace of contract negotiations, Freeberg said, but he called on the club to “step up” and “tell Delaware North to come to a fair agreement because the Twins organization will be affected by a strike.”
Local 17 has represented workers in Target Field concession stands since the ballpark opened in 2010. Last fall, about 200 workers in the facility’s premium restaurants won their campaign to join the union too, nearly doubling the size of the bargaining unit – and increasing its leverage at the table.
Local 17’s previous contract expired in January but remains in effect as negotiations continue.
If Delaware North workers stage a strike June 22, it would be the first of its kind at any Twin Cities sports stadium, according to the union.
– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor
Union Advocate 
Leave a comment