OAKLAND — Every worker at the Oakland Coliseum and Oakland Arena has been told their job ends Dec. 31.
Legends Global, the company that has run the complex since 2012, filed a state layoff notice covering 1,605 employees. Its contract to operate the site expires at the end of the year. The notice reaches nearly everyone who makes an event happen there: close to a thousand stagehands, more than 200 guest services workers, about 150 food and hospitality workers, more than 100 security guards, dozens of janitors and the office staff behind them.
For a lot of East Oakland families, that is not a line in a corporate filing. It is the paycheck from working a concert, a game or a graduation in the building down the street.
New owners on the way
The layoffs come as the complex changes hands. In July, Oakland approved selling the city’s half of the site to the Oakland Acquisition Company, an affiliate of the African American Sports and Entertainment Group, for $110 million plus closing costs. The deal gives the Black-led group control of the Coliseum and the 103 acres around it, and it is scheduled to close by January 2027. Ray Bobbitt is the group’s managing partner.
Under the same plan, Oak View Group, a national arena company, is buying the 9-acre Arena site for $100 million.
Unions want it in writing
Unions representing the workers are negotiating with the new owners to carry their members through the change. UNITE HERE Local 2, which represents about 360 concession workers, is pointing to Oakland law. “Oakland law requires that workers keep their jobs and seniority even when ownership changes,” said Yulisa Elenes, the union’s East Bay vice president.
Harry Konstantopoulos, business agent for IATSE Local 107, the stagehands’ union, said Oak View Group and the African American Sports and Entertainment Group have assured the union they will keep union labor, and that Bobbitt gave his word that union jobs would be maintained. What the workers want now is that promise on paper before Dec. 31.
Members of the Theatrical Wardrobe Union Local 784, Teamsters Local 853, SEIU 1877 and IUOE Local 39 are also affected.
The new owners have a chance to start the next chapter of the Coliseum by keeping the people who already know how to run it. The Sun-Reporter will follow the negotiations.
Photo: The Oakland Coliseum. Milbpics / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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