President's Perspective
‘Labor Night’ at the Ballpark

(June 29, 2009) How nice is it to sit with a several thousand of your closest friends at a ballgame?

The answer: Very nice.

The Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild bought 50 tickets – the minimum order – to the Baltimore AFL-CIO Council’s annual “Labor Night” at Camden Yards on June 26. The Baltimore Orioles’ interleague game was against our local’s other hometown team, the Washington Nationals, and sales initially were slow. But they accelerated to such a point that we had to buy another 40 tickets and, later, 5 more to take care of all of the requests: 95 tickets in all.

With that many people from the Guild, as well as their families and friends, planning on seeing the game, I made the decision to go, too. Admittedly, there is a bit of the “ward heeler” ethic at play here, but there was also the opportunity to meet Guild members whom – in a 1,700-member local spread out among two-dozen employers and probably at least twice as many worksites – one wouldn’t ordinarily get to see.

My own tendency at the ballpark is to sit in my seat once I arrive and stay there for the length of the game. But I did ask everyone who was sitting around me, or saying “pardon me” as they worked their way by to get to their own seats, whether they were from the Guild. In so doing, I met WBNG members from BNA, Jobs With Justice, and the AFL-CIO. I sat next to a librarian from the Washington Teachers Union and her young son.

And for the $5 we paid, these were great seats, in the lower bowl in left-center field – definite home-run territory.

The thousands of union members on hand – “Labor Night” is perennially the Orioles’ biggest single group outing of the season: 45,206 were on hand to see two last-place teams play – got to hear the National Anthem sung by members of the Charm City Labor Chorus, with help from members of the D.C. Labor Chorus.

And, if you were paying attention to the video screen between innings, you got to see your union local’s name scroll through. Because so many unions bought tickets, the list zipped through rather quickly. By the time I started paying attention, the alphabetical list was at “O,” meaning it had gone past “C” for “CWA,” our parent union, and “N” for “Newspaper Guild.” I was hoping to see a “W” for “Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild,” but no dice.
       
No matter. I supported the unionized vendors who passed through the stands offering a wide variety of snacks and beverages. And they kept coming. No wonder: Unionized workers make more than their nonunion counterparts. And when you eliminate from the equation the “wages” of the wealthy and the super-wealthy, the union advantage is even greater.

There were to be no homers falling into our section, but when it’s a game between Baltimore and Washington, at least some people will go home happy. On Labor Night, it was the Orioles faithful wearing smiles at the end of an 11-1 game. The O’s win was in large part thanks to an eight-run sixth inning that burned through three Nationals pitchers and put things well out of reach.
  
Even if I didn’t meet you at the ballpark, I wanted to thank you for coming out to the ballgame and rooting on the fine members of the Major League Baseball Players Association (and not getting too harshly on the backs of the members of the World Umpires Association).

And I want to thank at least one individual union member, BNA unit Secretary Rich Bronson, who really talked up “Labor Night” in the workplace. “BNA sent 38 people to the game,” he said. That number includes workers for BNA in Rockville and those whose requests were so late they had to get their tickets at “Will Call.”

The Metropolitan Washington AFL-CIO Council holds its own “Labor Night,” at Nationals Park, and – no surprise – it’s also the Nats’ biggest group outing each season. This year’s game is Saturday, July 26, against the San Diego Padres. Tickets are $10 each.

If you want tickets, get them directly through the D.C. AFL-CIO, by calling the council at 202-974-8150.