Sean Sellers Labor Notes September 2007
Just two blocks away from the birthplace of one of baseball's legendary heroes, Babe Ruth, lies Camden Yards. A $110 million mass of brick and steel with a classic facade, the downtown stadium is home to the Baltimore Orioles for 81 games every year between April and September. It's also home to some of Baltimore's most impoverished workers who, through the organization United Workers, are fighting back for a living wage and dignity on the job.
At full capacity, Camden Yards seats nearly 50,000 people. Between the discarded hot dog wrappers, peanut shells, and plastic cups, these fans leave behind a daunting mess. Cleaning the stadium night after night is a labor-intensive process that requires up to 150 workers, making Camden Yards one of the largest employers of day laborers in the city.
Similar to day labor work in other industries, the work in the stadium is characterized by low wages and a lack of labor rights.
"My work conditions at Camden Yards were horrible," recalled Carl Johnson, a former stadium cleaner and United Workers member. "During work we hardly had any lunch breaks. And if we did, supervisors would have us eat leftovers from trash bags. I felt like an animal. Sometimes we were not paid at all."
In addition to degrading treatment by supervisors, workers describe unpaid mandatory wait times at the stadium gates often totaling two to three hours per shift. Moreover, some workers claim they receive automatic pay deductions for van rides provided by the stadium authority's subcontractors regardless of whether workers actually use these services.
Factoring in deductions and wait times, workers earn around $6 per hour or less, a rate significantly below the $9.62 living wage established by the Baltimore City Wage Commission and national prevailing wages in the cleaning industry.
WORKER-LED ASSOCIATION The workers at Camden Yards are pressing for improvements at the stadium through innovative self-organization and aggressive campaigning. Founded five years ago by day laborers meeting in a local homeless shelter, the United Workers is a multiracial workers center that has grown to include over 900 low-wage workers.
Members are primarily African Americans and Latino immigrants dispersed throughout the Baltimore area. A leadership committee composed entirely of low-wage workers is responsible for key decisions while a business committee, also composed entirely of low-wage workers, is responsible for day-to-day oversight of the organization.
Dedicated to fighting the root causes of poverty in Baltimore, including temporary day labor, the United Workers turned its attention to Camden Yards in 2003. While the miserable conditions at the stadium were obvious, it was less clear who to hold responsible.
The cleaners do not work directly for the Orioles or the stadium's operators, the Maryland Stadium Authority (MSA). Instead, the stadium authority outsources cleaning to a facilities management firm which then subcontracts to local staffing agencies.
BROKEN PROMISES While drawing public attention to the workers' situation, early campaign strategy centered around the Orioles owner, Peter Angelos, a multi-millionaire labor lawyer with a public reputation as a "friend of labor." According to the United Workers, Angelos privately agreed in 2004 to pay the stadium cleaners the difference between their current wage and the living wage for Baltimore.
That same year, MSA fired its cleaning contractor and signed a new agreement with Michigan-based Knight Facilities Management. The contract, worth $1.9 million annually, is set to expire in January with two one-year renewal options.
In a hopeful move, Knight FM soon signed a code of conduct granting the United Workers representation for the stadium cleaners as well as outlining working conditions and grievance procedures. MSA also instructed Knight FM to raise base pay for the cleaners to $7 per hour.
However, according to the United Workers, these positive developments quickly gave way to broken promises as Angelos did not honor his pledge. Meanwhile, the stadium authority continued to subcontract staffing agencies with questionable labor practices. Some of these employers are currently under investigation by the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation.
The United Workers offered a potential solution to the stalemate in 2006 by proposing a "Living Wages Co-op." The co-op would function as a worker-owned subcontractor, eliminating a layer of management and thus performing the same services at the same cost while paying a living wage to its workers. At a joint press conference, Knight FM signed on to the United Workers' proposal by announcing a start date, but implementation of the co-op was blocked by either MSA or Angelos.
At the beginning of the 2007 baseball season, the UWA announced a September 1 deadline for achieving a binding solution with the stadium authority, threatening an escalation of its pressure campaign if the deadline was not met. After a series of meetings, MSA informed the United Workers on August 7 that it would not be meeting the September deadline.
On August 15, the United Workers announced at the gates of Camden Yards that it would launch a hunger strike if workers' demands were not met. Rose Menustik, a stadium cleaner with the United Workers, explained: "We have been fighting for living wages at Camden Yards for over three years. After three years of broken promises, we are fed up.The public's money should not be going to pay workers poverty wages. It should be going to give workers a living wage."
Whether the looming hunger strike will be necessary remains to be seen. As Labor Notes goes to print, United Workers is organizing a Concert for Human Rights at Camden Yards on September 8-to either celebrate a victory or amplify their message. In any event, September is shaping up to be a month to remember for Baltimore's low-wage workers.
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Sean Sellers is a member of the Student/Farmworker Alliance and lives in Austin, Texas.
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