Anaheim Offers Some Stadium Workers Bonuses

Part-time employees who will lose their jobs at Anaheim Stadium when Disney Baseball Enterprises takes over will receive incentive payments starting at $50 to stay through the season, the City Council decided Tuesday.

The status of the stadium’s 566 part-time employees and 123 parking lot attendants remains undecided. Disney, which will assume operations at the city-owned stadium in October, will interview employees who reapply for their jobs and decide by Aug. 1 whether to rehire them, said David Hill, the city’s human resources director.

Under the council’s action Tuesday, payments to employees who are not kept on will range from a $50 lump sum for those with four years of service or less, to $50 per year of service for those who have been employed for 25 years or more.

“It’s very hard,” Hill said. “A lot of the season ticket holders know these employees by their first name and the employees are very attached to the fans. They have done an excellent job for us for 30 years.”

Among the people affected are ushers, ticket sellers, ticket takers, security guards, and scoreboard, video display and game clock operators.

In a separate action, the council approved a one-time payment of $75 for any of the 123 parking lot attendants who are not retained by Disney but work for the rest of this baseball season.

Hill said Disney is expected to decide by July whether to take over parking operations themselves or enter into an agreement with the city to handle parking.

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Concession and souvenir workers are not yet affected because they are under contract for one more year with Ogden Facility Management Corp., which also handles those services at the Pond.

The stadium’s 35 full-time employees also may or may not be retained by Disney, but they are not covered by the incentive package. Rather, the city currently is working with two full-time employee unions on severance packages for those employees who are not hired by Disney nor absorbed by another city department, Hill said.

City officials said jobs at Anaheim Convention Center will be held open as they become available, and transfers from the stadium will be done whenever possible. The city will help part-time and full-time employees, who do not find new jobs within the municipal government, with things such as resume preparation and job training.

“A lot of these people have not looked for jobs in quite a while,” Hill said. “We will do whatever we can to support them as they go through this transition.”

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The incentive payments will come from money the city saved by renegotiating stadium employees’ pension plans. Employees now pay more of the cost.

Councilman Bob Zemel cast the only vote against the payment package, saying, “just because we have a savings doesn’t mean we have to have an expenditure.”

The deal approved last week giving Disney control of stadium operations paved the way for the entertainment giant to acquire a controlling interest in the California Angels by buying 25% of the ownership of the team.