Once again, the Mets are acting like a penny-pinching bush-league team. This time, the focus is on out of work Citi Field workers who are not being paid.
In theory, the Mets, along with all major league teams, have donated $1 million to a fund set aside for workers at their home ballpark(s) who have been displaced by the postponement of the 2020 season.
However, according to a story in today’s New York Daily News, Citi Field workers have yet to be advised what their current job status is, much less if and when they can expect some form of relief from the Mets.
Mets: Hang On, We’re Looking At It
Meanwhile, the Mets insist in a released statement they are “in the process of carefully considering the most appropriate way to allocate these funds”.
This, in turn, raises the question of how much time and “careful consideration” is reasonable given the fact the Mets have had a month’s notice to prepare a means to distribute the money.
To be fair, the issue is complicated somewhat by the relationship between the Mets and Aramark, the company employed by the Mets to operate their concessions.
Aramark, which made $14.6 billion in revenue in 2018, signs their worker paychecks, while the Mets, who were almost sold for $2.6 billion in a since-botched deal, signs Aramark’s. (Bradford William Davis, NY Daily News)
In effect, then, who is holding the ball here, Aramark or the Mets. The Unite Here Local 100, the union that represents roughly 340 food workers, is seeking an answer.
Mets Saul Katz: What’d You Say?
An appeal from the union addressed to Mets team president and part-owner Saul Katz has gone unanswered, suggesting the Mets are saying “ain’t my problem”.
This might pass as good and hard-nosed business sense, but it reeks (once again) of the Mets disassociation from reality and the need to step up during these tenuous and trying times.
Mets vs. Red Sox – Mets lose
Over in Brooklyn and a short distance from Citi Field, New York Nets owner Joe Tsai committed to paying non-salaried Barclays arena workers on March 12, one day after the NBA season was canceled.
More damning to the Mets response thus far is the benevolent answer from the Red Sox, who upped their pledge from $1 million to $1.5 million after Fenway Park’s Aramark workers petitioned the organization.
Same company, same circumstances, but there’s an entirely different response in New England.
Fred Wilpon: Tigers Never Lose Their Stripes
Mets players who, through the auspices of their powerful union and an agreement with MLB, will be paid a pro-rated salary and will retain service time relevant to free agency, beginning on April 15 and even if the season is eventually canceled.
But this has nothing to do with Mets players or GM Brodie Van Wagenen, who are both powerless entities in this discussion.
No, this one goes straight to the top where the problem has always sat.
Ownership of any business represents and is the business. Microsoft makes PC’s many of us rely on and enjoy.
But it is Bill Gates, who, along with his wife Melinda, is the face of Microsoft.
Tigers never lose their stripes, and it’s unrealistic to think Fred Wilpon will suddenly transform into the benevolent Gates family.
Fred Wilpon – Meet Lavoune Witherspoon
But at the same time, it remains a worthy endeavor and almost a civic duty to expose the Wilpon Family in yet another instance of sheepishness and greed, intended to squeeze every last penny out of the Mets before they sell the team.
Even if it’s at the expense of a cook like Lavoune Witherspoon (today’s featured image).
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.
