Morning Report: The Shadow Labor Force Staffing Concession Stands Across San Diego

The Voice of San Diego

November 9, 2023

Our Will Huntsberry recently revealed that a nonprofit that helped staff several concession stands for every event at Petco Park and Snapdragon Stadium with volunteers didn’t actually exist.

It provoked the question: If it didn’t exist as a nonprofit, who were the volunteers and what were they volunteering for?

It turns out, after further digging, that often the supposed volunteers staffing concession stands at major venues across San Diego are actually being paid under the table and below minimum wage. The practice appears to be pervasive here and maybe far beyond San Diego, a new investigation finds.

What started as a win-win for venues and nonprofits has morphed into a system where nonprofits became unofficial staffing services providing a cheap, off-the-books labor source to third-party concession companies, Huntsberry’s investigation found.

He talked to people who worked some of the stands and he’s got receipts.

Read the investigation here.

San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott has endorsed Heather Ferbert, her chief deputy, for the job Elliott will leave next year. Ferbert’s opponent, Assemblymember Brian Maienschein, has a longer list of supporters including the county Democratic Party, Mayor Todd Gloria, City Council members and unions. Here’s the U-T’s take how the race is shaping up.

Elliott is the biggest endorsement Ferbert has gotten since the city of San Diego’s largest union of city employees, the Municipal Employees Association, endorsed Ferbert.

It was widely assumed Elliott supported Herbert but she had not said it publicly. While Maienschein has bigger endorsements and the Democratic Party’s official support will provide valuable infrastructure for his campaign, Herbert has the same job title Elliott had when she surprised two better funded candidates in the 2016 primary election and then later won the job.

Maienschein told a group of Democrats in Pacific Beach last week that he would not run for attorney general in six years despite having a campaign committee open to do that.

Last week, San Diego Unified officials raised a Kumeyaay-Diegueño Nation flag above the district’s headquarters in University Heights. Our Jakob McWhinney was there to witness the celebration.

McWhinney writes that the move coincides with Native American Heritage Month, but it also means so much more to community members and activists.

Native community members want to see the district continue efforts to further ingrain indigenous communities into the curriculum. The district has already made some changes, but community members say more work is needed.

Read the Learning Curve here.

Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit news organization supported by our members. We reveal why things are the way they are and expose facts that people in power might not want out there and explain complex local public policy issues so you can be engaged and make good decisions. Sign up for our newsletters at voiceofsandiego.org/newsletters/.