Employees for the Arizona Diamondbacks have no idea when their full salaries will be restored.
The Arizona Diamondbacks continue to institute pay cuts to baseball operations, player development and business side employees, according to sources familiar with the situation.
The cuts are of varying degrees, though some are said to be “significant.”
A team spokesperson confirmed that the pay cuts are still in place, citing that the team is still waiting to determine 2021 revenues and did not want to treat employees differently on the baseball and business sides of the organization.
The Diamondbacks are believed to be one of the only teams in baseball still implementing pay cuts to employees. The team is waiting for ticket sales, among other things, before making any changes to expenses.
While tickets for spring training games will go on sale Saturday, the organization has not received clarity on if fans will be allowed at regular season games at Chase Field.
Diamondbacks employees are expected to do full amount of work for less money
Meanwhile, amateur scouts are “running around the country right now doing the same amount of work for a significantly less amount of money,” one team source said. The team’s payroll this season is an estimated $96.8 million, almost a 13 percent decrease from their non-prorated payroll in 2020 of $111 million, while only signing Asdrubal Cabrera and Joakim Soria to major-league contracts.
“When the rest of the league is taking care of their employees, the Diamondbacks are not.”
The Diamondbacks furloughed or eliminated the positions of more than 25 percent of their employees last May, a cost-cutting measure made necessary as the team reportedly braced for revenue losses in the neighborhood of $100 million. The remaining staff took pay cuts, with the average cut for the remaining staff being 15 percent, according to the Arizona Republic.
There is some hope, however, that fans may be allowed at Diamondbacks games at some point this season. The Arizona Cardinals and Arizona Coyotes had a limited number of fans at their games this season, with the Phoenix Suns recently allowing 1,500 fans to a Feb. 4 game against the New Orleans Pelicans.
Fans eventually being allowed inside Chase Field would go a long way toward the Diamondbacks being able to reinstate full salaries for team employees, who continue to express frustration by the pay cuts.
“We care deeply about our employees, which makes these decisions even more difficult,” Diamondbacks Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick and CEO Derrick Hall said in a statement last May. “We have tried to minimize the impact as much as possible but these are truly unprecedented economic times and we recognize that this is affecting everyone in our organization and community.
Said one Diamondbacks employee late Friday night: “When the rest of the league is taking care of their employees, the Diamondbacks are not.”