Workers who staff the concessions at Oriole Park at Camden Yards face a continuing limbo as the start of a new baseball season approaches. The Orioles are set to start an abbreviated, 60-game season July 24 with a Fenway Park matchup against the Boston Red Sox.
The team's home opener will be July 29 against the Miami Marlins. But with games scheduled to play before mostly empty stadiums, the prospects for ballpark concessions workers hoping to return to their jobs remain slim. The Orioles' food and beverage partner, Delaware North, filed a Work Adjustment and Retraining Notification with Maryland's Department of Labor last week for 350 laid-off employees. The layoff was dated March 23, three days ahead of the scheduled start of the 2020 Major League Baseball season before it was put on hold by the novel coronavirus outbreak. Now it appears the layoffs will stretch into the fall. Though the WARN notice lists 350 Delaware North employees at Camden Yards, a union official says there are actually closer to 700 concessions workers at the stadium.
