UWA & Camden Yards cleaners hold April Fool’s Day Protest outside of stadium

BALTIMORE - The UWA, a Baltimore-based human rights organization that represents the cleaners at Camden Yards, will be kicking off its Summer of Justice campaign at this Saturday’s game between the Nationals and Orioles. The UWA invited Executive Directors of five Baltimore soup kitchens to stand with the cleaners for above poverty wages at Camden Yards at the protest. Each of the five soup kitchens will get up to $100,000 from the Orioles and the Weinberg Foundation at the April 1st game. All five soup kitchens refused to stand with the cleaners.

“I can’t help but wonder about the timing of this handout,” said UWA member Carl Johnson, a cleaner at the stadium. “It’s like they want to deflect our protest against Angelos, to cover up his lying about giving us a living wage.”

The UWA’s Summer of Justice marks the start of the fourth year of the UWA’s campaign to secure above-poverty wages for the stadium’s cleaners. In 2004 Peter Angelos promised the cleaners that he’d make up the difference between the current wage and Baltimore City’s Living Wage rate, which is currently $9.06 an hour. The UWA has been pressuring Angelos to keep his promise through a series of protests outside of Angelos’s offices in downtown Baltimore and at Camden Yards. This year, on June 23-24, 2006, the UWA plans to hold an all-night vigil with morning prayer services and then to lead hundreds of cleaners and community supporters on a march to the stadium.

Who: UWA (United Workers Association) & cleaners at Camden Yards
What: April Fool’s Day Kick-Off to the UWA’s Summer of Justice
Where: Camden Yards, Eutaw Street Entrance (Baltimore, MD)
When: Saturday April 1, 2006; 4:10 PM

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The UWA organizes Maryland's low-wage workers for freedom from poverty by working to secure the human rights of all. The UWA is a poor people's human rights organization led by the poor themselves. In 2003 the UWA started a multi-year campaign to end poverty wages at Camden Yards in Baltimore. Day labor and temp agencies are central forces of worker exploitation, union busting and poverty wages. Given this, the UWA has long focused on organizing day laborers as a key first step in raising working conditions for all Baltimore's residents. The UWA decided to focus on Camden Yards in part because it is the largest day labor employer in the city.

UWA (United Workers Association)
PO Box 41547 Baltimore, MD 21203
http://UnitedWorkersAssociation.org; media calls only: 410-499-5041; kertes@unitedworkersassociation.org
Tom Kertes


This release was published on openPR.