Angels to pay employees through May amid coronavirus shutdown
Rather than take extreme cost-cutting measures as they wait to find out the fate of the Major League Baseball season, the Angels on Tuesday informed baseball operations employees they would continue to be paid through the end of May.
That group includes general manager Billy Eppler and his assistants, manager Joe Maddon and his MLB coaching staff and those in coaching positions in the minor leagues. Other year-round employees will be compensated with full wages, said a person with knowledge of the situation.
They all form part of the same group that Commissioner Rob Manfred told teams one day earlier they could lay off.
The coronavirus-related shutdown forced the league and team owners to seek financial relief. In an effort to help, Manfred suspended uniform employee contracts — which cover baseball operations staffers — because of the loss of revenue caused by the inability to play games during the national health emergency. The move allowed teams to lay off or cut the pay of major and minor league managers, coaches, trainers and full-time scouts starting May 1.
The lawsuit against MLB and partners seeks class action certification and demands refund of ticket costs and ancillary fees for games that have not been played.
Most teams have decided not to reduce payroll for the time being, according to ESPN. It is not yet clear what route the Dodgers, one of the league’s wealthiest franchises, will take. The team has not announced if it will join the 24 teams that have committed to paying their baseball operations staff next month.
The Dodgers are not the only high-revenue franchise yet to offer assurances to employees. The World Series champion Washington Nationals had not committed to paying baseball operations members in May by Tuesday night.
The Dodgers have been slow to follow through on their commitment to distribute $1 million in financial support to game-day workers, as all MLB teams have been told to do by the league league more than a month ago. They announced Tuesday night they would allot $1.3 million to aid employees who worked at least 100 hours at Dodger Stadium last year and expected to work again this season.
The Angels, meanwhile, announced Sunday that they had begun to distribute one-time payments totaling more than $1.2 million to more than 1,800 game-day workers.
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