As A's Play Last Game in Oakland, Coliseum Workers Feel the Financial and Emotional Toll

Follow live coverage from KQED reporters and photographers of the A’s final game at the Oakland Coliseum.

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ob Rosenthal, a lifelong baseball fan and a merchandise vendor at the Oakland Coliseum, said he likens working during A’s games to “getting paid to eat candy.”

“If I wasn’t doing it, I’d probably be going to the games and spending money,” said the 73-year-old, who worked at the Coliseum since the first A’s game there in 1968, when the team moved to Oakland from Kansas City. “I figured I might as well work there and get paid for what I do.”

Despite his sunny disposition, sporting the team’s green and gold, he said the last few weeks have been “heart-wrenching.” He is among hundreds of workers — security, food vendors, broadcasters, among others — who face uncertain times as the A’s play their final home game at the Coliseum on Thursday.

“It’s basically cutting out 50 percent of my salary,” said Rosenthal, who also works a similar gig at San Francisco Giants games. “I’m not going to be able to go on vacations like I used to.”

In April, A’s owner John Fisher announced the team would move to West Sacramento for at least the next three seasons while a proposed new $1.5 billion stadium in Las Vegas is built to house the A’s permanently. In a press release on Monday, he apologized to fans: “Though I wish I could speak to each one of you individually, I can tell you this from the heart: we tried. Staying in Oakland was our goal. It was our mission, and we failed to achieve it. And for that, I am genuinely sorry.”

The Bay Area has historically been blessed with a multitude of professional sports teams that have allowed the many Coliseum workers to cobble together a full-time workload. When baseball season ends, people can transition to working football and basketball game, or nonsporting events, like concerts.

“To make a living in this business, you have to work multiple venues,” said John Arnolfo, the director of the concessions vendors division for Teamsters Local 853, which represents about 60 Coliseum vendors, including Rosenthal. “Most of these people that work the A’s, they work the Giants, Warriors, 49ers. They used to work the Raiders.”

According to Arnolfo, the arrival of a women’s professional basketball team, the Golden State Valkyries, which are set to begin playing next season at San Francisco’s Chase Center, will also help soften the financial blow for some Coliseum workers.

But out of all those sports, baseball promises the most profits for many workers because there are so many games, multiple workers told KQED. During a six-month regular season, the A’s play around 81 games out of a 162-game season at home. (By comparison, the 49ers are scheduled to play nine  games at home out of their 17-game season.)

“There’s so many people at the Coliseum that we’ve seen every day who’ve been here even longer than I’ve been here, and I don’t know what their future holds, and that breaks my heart,” said David Feldman, who grew up in Walnut Creek, and has worked on the A’s television broadcast crew since 1991. “Besides the place where I live, the place where I have spent the most days of my life has been at the Oakland Coliseum.”

He said until now, Major League Baseball has done a good job of making sure the A’s and Giants aren’t playing home games at the same time, allowing him to work for both teams. This season, the A’s and the Giants only played six games when both teams were at home.

With the A’s moving out of the Bay Area next season, the MLB has scheduled the two baseball teams to play 56 home games at the same time. This means, next year, even if he wanted to make the drive to West Sacramento to work an A’s game, it would likely conflict with his ability to work a Giants game, Feldman said.

“That’s going to impact a lot of the TV crew workers who used to work at both places,” he added.

Feldman hopes to continue to work for A’s broadcasting, but how that might work out is unclear to him.

“It hasn’t been talked about,” he said.

Workers face different outcomes once the Coliseum shuts its gates to the A’s partly because of the patchwork of employers there — the team itself, third-party contractors for things like security, and the food service giant Aramark, which employs people in roles like cooks, bartenders, and food servers. Some employees have union representation and some do not.

Unite Here Local 2 represents over 400 people, many working for Aramark. IATSE 107 represents stagehands who service the building, fixing seats and setting up metal detectors. Allied Universal takes care of security during games.

Yulisa Elenes, vice president of the East and North Bay at Unite Here Local 2, said that workers she represents — many of whom have worked at the Coliseum for decades — are at risk of being laid off by Aramark once the A’s leave because their contract is specific to the Oakland Coliseum.

“These jobs here at the Coliseum have been really important to the community in Oakland,” she said. “A lot of the workers have used this job as a way to be able to get benefits, get training to learn how to be a cook or concession worker and apply those skills to get a different job.”

She said longtime employees are upset that Aramark denied a proposal from the union for severance pay and that the company is cutting off workers’ benefits earlier than what workers are entitled to. She said the union plans to file a grievance with Aramark.

In a statement to KQED, Debbie Albert, a spokesperson for Aramark, said: “We understand that this is a difficult transition period. We are bargaining in good faith with the union regarding the effects of the A’s departure and are prepared to offer those impacted available roles in other areas of our organization.”

As for the future of the Oakland Coliseum itself, in August, the Oakland Roots soccer team announced they reached a deal to play their 2025 home games at the Coliseum, ensuring at least for part of next year, the venue will not sit vacant. Both the A’s and the city of Oakland have sold their share of the Coliseum site to a local Black-owned developer group with plans for housing, green space, entertainment and retail for the site.

Even with some prospects for other work, for people like Bob Rosenthal, who has been working at the Coliseum as long as the A’s, Thursday’s game will be a hard day.

“It’s going to be quite emotional walking out of there and getting into my car for the last time,” he said.

Feldman said he has been going through the five stages of grief. He’s now at acceptance.

“I think for most of the fans and the employees, we’re all feeling it. It’s easy to put blame on the A’s owners, and some people want to blame the city of Oakland, but at the end of the day, it just sucks for everybody.”