Some Oakland Coliseum Workers Say They Never Received Assistance From A’s Farewell Fund

When the A’s packed their bags and left the Oakland Coliseum for good last September, longtime ballpark workers like Erica Quinonez looked forward to a token of appreciation from the team. The A’s had created a $1 million “Oakland Coliseum Vendor Assistance Fund”, intended to help alleviate the financial hardship caused by the team’s departure.

“I was like, ‘Yes! This is going to help me move,” said Quinonez, a former supervisor for Allied Universal, which provided security services during A’s games at the Coliseum.

But her excitement quickly turned to despair and anger when her application was denied. It felt like a slap in the face, she said.

“I could have used that money. It really could have helped,” said Quinonez, who said the loss of income resulting from professional sports teams — like the A’s and Raiders — leaving Oakland made her decide to move away from the Bay Area.

“I just had a baby 11 months ago,” Quinonez said. “When we didn’t get the money, I was like, ‘Oh man, what are we going to do now?’”

Quinonez is one of four workers who told KQED they were upset by their experience applying to the fund. They described a variety of outcomes ranging from outright rejection of their application, to lack of a response, to disappointment over paltry amounts of cash. For some, the financial hardship will extend into the upcoming baseball season, as the A’s home opener is set for Monday at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento.

The application and eligibility requirements for the Oakland Coliseum Vendor Assistance Fund appeared to be straightforward. According to a letter sent to workers, employees of third-party vendors — Aramark, Allied Universal, ASM, Fanatics and ProPark — had two and a half months to apply online to the fund, which would disburse a payout of between $250 and $2,500 in the form of a taxable grant.

Applicants had to be employed by one of the five vendors, have provided gameday services at the Oakland Coliseum and have worked a minimum number of hours between the 2023 and 2024 seasons. Relief Fund Services Group, a company that aims to streamline aid disbursement, administered the website where workers applied.

Quinonez told KQED she worked security for Allied Universal at the Coliseum “every game she could” from 2017 to 2024. After she applied for the fund, she found out she was denied for reasons not listed in the application.

An email sent to Quinonez from Oakland A’s People Operations and obtained by KQED stated the following: “In order to be eligible for the grant, employees needed to be regularly stationed at the Oakland branch, not Union City or Chase Center.”

Because Quinonez worked out of Allied Universal’s Union City office, not the Oakland branch, she was denied funds.

When KQED reached out to the A’s for comment, a spokesperson initially requested “additional details” but, after multiple follow-up messages, stopped responding to emails.

Relief Fund Services Group did not respond to interview requests.

Two other employees of Allied Universal who worked out of the Union City branch said they also applied for the Vendor Assistance Fund but did not hear back and never received any money.

“ There was a lot of us that worked every single game they let us work, and it wasn’t acknowledged in any way, shape or form,” said one worker, who is currently employed by Allied Universal and asked not to be named due to concerns of professional repercussions. The employee estimated that a few dozen other workers could have also been denied funds because they were based in Union City.

“Even if it was $500, just something to acknowledge our hard work there.”

Allied Universal did not respond to interview requests.

Between 400 and 450 security officers represented by SEIU-USWW worked at the Coliseum and were employed by Allied Universal, according to Stephen Boardman, communications director for the union.

“Any SEIU-USWW member who worked at the Coliseum and feels they were wrongly denied this benefit should contact the union right away,” Boardman said in an email to KQED.

Bob Rosenthal, who worked at the Coliseum since the first A’s game there in 1968, most recently as a merchandise vendor at a fan store for the concessionaire Fanatics, applied to the fund and received money.

Rosenthal declined to say how much he was awarded but said it “ wasn’t a ton of money.”

“It did help as far as putting food on the table because obviously I was unemployed at the time,” he said.

Rosenthal is a member of Teamsters Local 853, which represented about 60 Coliseum vendors last baseball season. He said he hadn’t heard of anyone else being denied by the fund.

“Everybody I’m close to, that I work with, all got theirs,” he added. “This is news to me.”

Julie Silva, another member of Teamsters Local 853 who worked for the A’s as an employee of Aramark and Fanatics over 15 years doing retail and warehouse work, received $1,500 from the fund but was offended by the lack of support.

“ I really felt like they could have done better, especially for a lot of the people that have been there since the stadium opened,” Silva said. “It wasn’t even a hundred dollars for every year that I worked there, and I just felt like that was kind of cheap.”

Unite Here Local 2, a labor union that represented around 400 Coliseum workers employed by the food-service giant Aramark, made an unsuccessful bid for severance and extended health benefits for its members before the vendor assistance fund was announced, according to Ted Waechter, a spokesperson for the union.

“We really have to fight to get anything out of these companies, and we didn’t have the leverage we needed,” Waechter told KQED. “We didn’t have anything to strike.”

Waechter said the union hasn’t heard of any of its members who applied to the Vendor Assistance Fund being denied.

Representatives from both Unite Here Local 2 and Teamsters 853 said that besides the Vendor Assistance Fund, there was no other monetary assistance offered to workers from the team or the companies they worked for upon the A’s departure from Oakland. Both unions said they were not in direct contact with the A’s about the creation of that fund.

With the A’s now based in West Sacramento, former Coliseum workers like Silva are bracing for a significant loss in income during a typically lucrative time of year. Working retail and earning commission during A’s games, Silva said she could make between $200 to $1,000 a night. Silva said she was not made aware of a hiring fair at the Sutter Health Park and has missed out on employment there.

“ It’s going to be a huge impact because it’s almost half of my income that I lose. It’s a very hefty chunk of change,” Silva said.