Right-wing commentator of the Baltimore Examiner Dan Gainor trashed the Camden Yards cleaners who are have announced that they will hunger strike starting Sept 3 in to secure a living wage at the publicly owned stadium.
The great labor battles are written in large type across American history — the Haymarket riots, the railroad strike of 1877 — even the battles between miners and mine owners in Harlan County, Ky. But Camden Yards?Yes. The new great battleground for the labor movement is the stadium, and the rallying cry isn’t some Depression-era slogan about dimes. It’s the far pricier “living wage.”
Gainor continues:
Day laborers who clean up trash for the Maryland Stadium Authority want more money and have protested and even announced an 11-person hunger strike for “justice.” It’s organized by United Workers, a self-described “human rights organization of low-wage workers and others in poverty.” The group’s goal, according to Communications Organizer Greg Rosenthal, is a “living wage” of $9.62 per hour. That would replace the roughly $7 an hour day laborers earn as part of working for what the group’s Web site calls “institutional slavery.”
Gainor contiunes by asserting that the cleaners at Camden Yards don't have a human right to a living wage because they pick up trash. He trashes workers because they are trying to earn a living by (in Gainor's words) working in "100-degree heat cleaning up smelly garbage and constantly bending over, picking up more and more trash."
The hunger strikers are outraged and have called all of the over 800 low-wage members of the United Workers. Workers are saying that they'd like Gainor to clean up the stadium himself and stop trashing those who do.
Carl, a hunger striker, writes:
This is Carl, as a worker and a hunger striker, I'm OUTRAGED about this article. This guy is one those people who would love to see me dead or in jail.
Something needs to be done about this, and you know the United Workers is on top of this. For all of our allies we need a plan for action. I've been in this organiztion for too long to called poor and lazy and just stand by and let it happen. I am a proud hunger striker and see you at the hunger strike starting Sept 3.
The United Workers demands a public apology by the Baltimore Examiner for publishing "hateful trashing of low-wage workers" and challenges Gainor to a debate over the poverty conditions at Camden Yards.
United Workers
Low-wage workers leading the way to poverty's end.
Trabajadores de bajo sueldo luchando para el fin a la pobreza.