Caddies drop lawsuit against PGA Tour, will receive increased healthcare stipend
A group of caddies dropped their lawsuit against the PGA Tour this week after nearly four years.
The lawsuit, filed by more than 80 caddies in California in 2015, was focused on their attempts to improve healthcare and retirement options for caddies and the bibs they wear during tournaments, which almost always don corporate sponsorships.
The caddies lost their class-action lawsuit in 2016 and an appeal this year. However the Association of Professional Tour Caddies — which represents the caddies on Tour — reached a deal with the Tour.
“I told the guys, if we really want a healthy working relationship with the Tour, we need to fix this and open the lines of communication,” Scott Sajtinac, the president of the APTC, told the Golf Channel.
The Tour has agreed to increase the stipend it gives caddies for healthcare starting next year, according to the report. While Sijtinac did not specify the exact increase, he did confirm it was over 300 percent.
“It took a year and a half, but it turned out to be a good result,” Sajtinac told the Golf Channel. “Our goal is to close that window for the guys because healthcare is such a massive chunk of our income.
“It’s been really good. Everybody is really excited about this.”
Initially, the caddies looked to the bibs they wear at tournaments to help offset health insurance costs by selling sponsorships on them. They were told, though, that the bib wasn’t theirs to sell.
“We were told the bib is out of bounds because it wasn’t ours, even though we were the ones wearing it each and every week, plastered with different corporate logos,” Sajtinac said, via the Caddie Network. “Communication and dialogue to try and navigate through all this rapidly ended before it really even began — and we were left in no man’s land. Just rapidly increasing insurance costs.
“We didn’t understand why we couldn’t use our own bodies to save ourselves thousands of dollars in health care. That’s when the lawsuit began. We simply wanted our questions answered.”
Sajtinac said one of the biggest factors in getting this deal done was the appointment of Jay Monahan as the Tour’s new commissioner in 2017.
That, he said, was one of the biggest factors in repairing the relationship between caddies and the Tour.
“I’m delighted we’ve got to this point and I speak on behalf of all caddies when I say we truly look forward to a healthy working relationship with the Tour moving forward,” Sajtinac said, via the Caddie Network.
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