The United Workers is a human rights
organization based in Maryland of low-wage workers working to create the political
conditions for poverty’s end. This weekend the cleaners at Camden Yards
and other day laborers organized an all-night vigil in front of the Orioles
owner’s offices in downtown Baltimore. Workers also held a prayer breakfast
and marched with supporters to draw attention to poverty’s wrongs and
to how the publicly owned Camden Yards exploits low-wages workers for Peter
Angelos’s private interests. Workers aired out Angelos’s dirty laundry
of profiting from poverty and using Camden Yards for his private gain at great
cost to the community. Shirts we dirtied with poverty’s ills and carried on
a clothes line throughout the vigil and march.
This weekend’s events follow a series of protests and leadership development
programs that started with a tour from Maryland to Michigan that followed the
route of the Underground Railroad. Workers went to Michigan to take justice
in their own hands by proposing that a worker-owned cooperative be recognized
by one of the subcontractors at Camden Yards. Camden Yards is owned by the state
and run by the Maryland Stadium Authority. Rather than pay living wages to the
cleaners, the state spends more to outsource cleaning at the stadium. Currently
cleaning is outsourced to a company based in Saginaw, MI – leading the
cleaners on their Roadmap to Justice Tour this spring.
In Michigan the cleaners were well-accepted, with the contractor holding a
joint press conference in their headquarters with the cleaners announcing the
formation of the Living Wages Co-Op. The co-op would pay workers the city’s
living wage rate, which is $9.06 an hour. Since many of the stadium’s
current cleaners are paid less than Maryland’s minimum wage due to illegal
transportation charges, the move to $9.06 represents a major opportunity for
ending the poverty conditions at the stadium. Moreover, by operating as a worker-owned
cooperative, cleaners would be able to pay themselves a living wage without
charging the contractor, stadium or Orioles a penny more. Less overhead and
better operations would make this possible. The planned start date for the cooperative
was May 15, 2006.
Cleaners planned to hold a series of protests this summer to keep pressure
and exposure on the stadium and Angelos. The first protest was scheduled for
April 1, which Angelos decided would be a good day to pay out $250,000 to area
soup kitchens. Of course, the United Workers doesn’t oppose money going
to soup kitchens, but it’s impossible to miss that that amount of money
is what it would cost Angelos to pay a living wage to the cleaners who pick
up after fans paying money that goes into Angelos’s pockets. The cleaners
asked the kitchens to stand with workers on the night of the protest. All refused,
fearing retribution from Angelos and the Weinberg Foundation – which had
matched the payout dollar for dollar. Workers protested this by banging pots
and pans and chanting that “soup’s not enough” at the April
Fool’s Day between the Orioles and Nationals at Camden Yards.
On May 9, 2006 the contractor missed a meeting with the co-op. A few days later
communication was reestablished, but with bad news Angelos was blocking the
co-op, even though he should have no role in stadium business and the co-op
wouldn’t cost him a penny more. Even worse, Anglos had promised the workers
in 2004 that he’d personally make up the difference between the wage then
(which was $4 an hour, based on a flat rate paid to workers regardless of time
worked) and the Baltimore City Living Wage. Angelos not only broke his promise
then, but now he was stopping workers from taking justice in their own hands
by forming their own cleaning subcontractor at Camden Yards. The cleaners showed
up to work on May 15 even with the co-op blocked, demanding that Angelos let
them work. The next week cleaners took a bus to DC for the Nationals vs. Orioles
game to hold a Sweatshop Carnival. Fans were encouraged to play games like “Outsource
that Job,” “Wheel of Poverty,” and “Peanuts for Poverty
Wages Toss.”
This weekend marks a milestone for the organization with supporters and cleaners
spending the night in front of Angelos’s office to bring poverty to his
doorstep and to connect the conditions at Camden Yards to the bigger problem
of poverty everywhere. As a human rights organization, the United Workers seeks
an end to poverty. And while the group is focused on securing living wages at
a single stadium, it’s larger mission goes beyond just those cleaners.
The United Workers organizes around the value of the inherent dignity of each
person, using the framework provided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
to advance this value. And the group’s core strategy is to organize low-workers
from the bottom up by developing leaders from the ranks of the poor. The United
Workers is led by low-workers, with its Leadership Board comprised entirely
of low-wage cleaners and other day laborers.
All
photos from the weekend’s events
Disclaimer: I am the Communications Organizer for the United Workers.