A large group of Dodgers fans enthusiastically answered the call during an August home game against the Arizona Diamondbacks. It was the team’s eighth annual Union Night celebration, and while cheering for the Dodgers, fans also chanted for their local.
“Who are we?” a leather-lunged fan shouted.
“Teamsters!” came the reply.
The Dodgers’ marketing strategy aimed at blue-collar fans of the boys in blue isn’t hypocritical. The franchise reached two landmark Collective Bargaining Agreements in 2023 with the Service Employees International Union United Service Workers West (SEIU-USWW).
Although raises to the 450 employees that included ushers, security officers and groundskeepers were recognized as long overdue and took organized protests and the threat of a strike for the Dodgers to agree to a contract, the result was a decisive victory for union solidarity.
More recently the franchise hasn’t stood in the way of another segment of employees attempting to unionize. It has hammered out an agreement with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) representing the 55 or so Dodger Stadium tour guides — mostly part-timers whose knowledge of Dodgers history and love of the team is unsurpassed.
Yet ratifying the agreement has proven difficult because roughly half of the guides don’t want to unionize. A vote in October failed to pass by a 25-24 margin with six guides abstaining. Repeated emails by The Times to several tour guides who voted against unionizing were not answered, and the Dodgers declined to comment for this story.
The guides supporting the agreement have launched a re-vote for Dec. 15-17, and both sides have spent recent weeks busily lobbying guides perceived as uncommitted. The divide has impacted morale, tour guides say, at a time when Dodger Stadium tours have never been more popular, described by the Dodgers during union negotiations as a “robust money-making operation.”
“The demand has risen tremendously the last two years,” tour guide Cary Ginell said. “It’s been great for the Dodgers. When I joined in March 2022, the cost of a tour was $25. Now no tour is less than $42.50. The team is raking in the money and none of it goes to us.”
Even if the union agreement is approved, however, the battle won’t be over because guides opposing the union have already filed a decertification petition with the National Labor Relations Board to keep IATSE from representing the tour guides.
Although both sides accuse the other of underhanded tactics in swaying voters, the key issue dividing the group is fairly straightforward.
The new agreement would increase wages by 25% from $17.87 to $24 an hour — roughly the same rate the 2023 agreement did for the SEIU-USWW members — with additional $1 an hour increases in the second and third years of the contract.
Security measures at stadium entry points also would be improved. Tour guides have complained that fans who show up for tours are able to walk into the stadium top deck without passing through security, sometimes even while carrying backpacks.
That lapse would end, according to a draft of the CBA obtained by The Times: “The Employer shall provide and properly staff security checkpoints that include a metal detector and bag search at all designated points of entry for patrons entering Dodger Stadium for purposes of participating in stadium tours.”
Unionizing, however, might end the Dodgers’ longtime practice of giving tour guides four reserve-level tickets for each of the 13 homestands in a season, a perk worth an estimated $2,600 assuming the tickets are valued at $50 each. The prospect of that is a deal-breaker for many of the guides.
Tour guides present during negotiations said the Dodgers refused to mention free tickets in the union contract because they said other part-time union employees then would demand the same perk. The Dodgers made it clear they weren’t necessarily ending the perk, just that the issue couldn’t be addressed in the agreement.
The monetary value of the tickets is greater than the raise for tour guides that work close to the minimum number of 60 four-hour shifts per year. However, the average tour guide works about 125 shifts — 500 hours — a year, and they would be taking home more pay in raises than the tickets are worth.
Some less-experienced tour guides have felt pressure from anti-union veteran guides. Semaj Perry said that during his training in March, an older, respected guide convinced him to sign a decertification petition. Perry has since attended a negotiation session and read the agreement between the Dodgers and the union.
“It’s more of a status thing than a financial decision for some of the older tour guides,” Perry said. “For some of them, this is fun to do during retirement. I took the job because I needed to pay rent. I’m voting yes to join the union.”
Dodger Stadium tours have become increasingly popular — generating more than $1 million a year in revenue — because of recent stadium renovations, two consecutive World Series championships and the signings of Japanese stars Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki.
“The tour program has grown so much in the age of Ohtani,” said Ray Lokar, a veteran Dodgers tour guide whose full-time career was a high school coach and athletic director for nearly 40 years. “The visibility and security responsibilities have been amplified. It’s grown from a mom‐and‐pop operation of a dozen people showing folks around the stadium to a multi-million dollar asset.”
The stadium tours now fall under the management umbrella of a recently implemented revenue-producing initiative called Dodgers 365, which offers year-round rentals of everything from $50,000 for the field to $15,000 for the Centerfield Plaza to $12,500 for the Stadium Club. In September, the LA Card Show made its Dodger Stadium debut, drawing thousands of fans swapping and bartering trading cards.
While recognizing that possibly giving up free tickets is a stumbling block, several veteran tour guides who advocate joining the union are perplexed that so many of their colleagues are suspicious of organized labor. About all they agree on is that they love the Dodgers.
“The tour team amplifies the most valuable asset the Dodgers have: their brand, the 135 years of history, from the borough of Brooklyn to Dodger Stadium,” Ginell, author of 14 books on American music, said. “It’s a different function than any other employee. We make fans happy conveying that history, and it’s that history that got the Dodgers their $2 billion price tag.”
Lokar emphasized fairness as a reason tour guides should vote to approve union representation.
“We should be protected, respected and connected,” he said. “We wanted to feel safe physically and emotionally, be paid fairly, and not treated as second-class citizens.”
