Ballpark employees at Fenway Park could be headed toward a strike.
Represented by the service and hospitality workers union UNITE HERE Local 26, the Fenway workers overwhelmingly voted to green-light a strike. Sunday’s vote—where 95% of workers supported authorizing a strike—doesn’t mean a strike is necessarily on, but it does mean one could be coming soon.
The workers have been negotiating a new deal with Aramark, the food service and facilities provider that manages the ballpark, since their contract expired Dec. 31, 2024. That means they’ve been working without a deal for the entire baseball season. Union president Carlos Aramayo told Front Office Sports the two sides are “frankly very far apart” on two subjects: wages and automation. Scheduling is another concern.
Aramayo says Aramark is underpaying workers compared to other major league ballparks, even in states with a lower minimum wage. He says automation might be beneficial to Fenway workers in some cases, but he is worried about job losses with machines replacing vendors, especially at a ballpark like Fenway that markets itself as a historic, cultural experience. And, he says, workers are concerned specifically around automated alcohol sales because bartenders handle underage and overserved patrons in ways that a machine cannot.
“We sit in bargaining, and it almost feels like we’re not having the same conversation, or that we’re living in two different universes,” Aramayo told FOS. “There’s been very little engagement at all from the company on the automation issue. … And on wages, they’ve made proposals, but they are dollars off of where we need to get to, to get to what we believe is the standard we have established here in Boston and frankly the standard that exists at other ballparks.”
The Red Sox deferred comment to Aramark. “We intend to keep working with the union toward a settlement that works for everyone,” an Aramark spokesperson said in a statement to FOS. “In the event of a strike, we have contingency plans in place to ensure that services are not interrupted.”
If the workers go on strike, they want fans at Red Sox games to not buy food and beverages in the stadium. But it wouldn’t just be food and beverage vendors striking—employees including cooks, souvenir salespeople, suite attendants, and catering staff would also be involved. Workers at the nearby MGM Music Hall at Fenway, which is set to host five shows through the end of the month, are also involved and would go on strike.
Laura Crystal sells food and beer at Fenway Park, where she says she has worked for 18 seasons since she was 15 years old. She says as Aramark has scaled up automation, the company has increasingly decided not to schedule people for shifts or send them home after they show up to work. She echoes Aramayo’s concerns about alcohol safety with automation, and says that the “old-timey” experience the team sells has been increasingly cast aside for profit.
“It’s all very classic, it’s all very nostalgic, it’s very quintessential to baseball. … As soon as you put a computer in place of that transaction, you’re removing that ‘it’ factor,” Crystal told FOS. “This is not just a fight for our own wages, jobs, and seniority, this is a fight for the city of Boston to keep its gem the way that it is and the way that it’s always been meant to be. It’s very important to us as a [historical] landmark.”
Crystal sits on the union’s bargaining committee that is meeting this week to decide next steps, whether that means more conversations with Aramark or going on strike.
“Our hope is that this gets us to a negotiated settlement, but especially seeing the results of the vote this weekend, I think people are really prepared to walk out,” Aramayo says. “I think we’re looking at a real potential strike situation here at Fenway.” He added that he was surprised by the overwhelming support for a strike among members.
Crystal says she expects Red Sox fans to back the strike. “We know how it works around here; people are not going to cross the picket line, and Aramark is going to suffer financially,” she says.
This isn’t the first time stadium workers have battled with Aramark. Last September, workers went on strike in Philadelphia at Lincoln Financial Field, Wells Fargo Center, and Citizens Bank Park. Both sides reached a resolution in March, although not ratified, that will increase minimum wage to $20 per hour, health-care benefits, and 11 paid holidays. By 2029, minimum wage will be raised to at least $24 per hour.
