While the Boston Celtics have made a commitment to pay their game-night staff at TD Garden for the games suspended by the coronavirus pandemic, many more Garden employees are still in the dark a to whether they will receive any much-needed pay.
TD Garden is a comparatively rare arrangement in the NBA in that the Celtics do not own the arena in which they play, renting it from the parent company who own the building as well as the NHL’s Boston Bruins.
The Bruins and their parent company that owns TD Garden, Delaware North, are now the sole NHL franchise not committing to paying arena workers for lost wages, leaving something of a black mark on the organization for their slow response.
This is really troubling. Delaware North owns the Bruins, and its the only organization in the NHL that hasn’t announced financial support to game day employees. These wages will make a huge difference to hourly workers at the Garden. I hope the Jacobs family will act soon. https://t.co/tEYwjSfPyD
— Maura Healey (@MassAGO) March 19, 2020
Jeremy M. Jacobs, the principle owner, has not made a statement on the issue, but Bruins vice president of marketing and communications Matt Chmura released a statement on March 13:
“Delaware North at its core is a family company and our top priority is to provide our associates, and their families, with the assurances they deserve during this difficult time. We are actively exploring support options and will have further information in the coming days.”
The Boston Herald’s Marisa Ingemi reports both the Bruins and Delaware North organizations returned inquiries for comment on these issues, but Garden workers told the Herald they’d been advised to seek unemployment benefits, but have heard little else from their employer.
Hopefully the impasse is solved soon, as these families join many others around the U.S. as struggling to make ends meet in the wake of closures in a number of industries impacted by the coronavirus.
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