Baltimore Stadium Cleaning Crew Wins Voice at Work

October 14, 2008

WINNING TEAM – Temporary contract workers who clean Baltimore’s Oriole Park recently voted to join AFSCME. Here they celebrate achieving a wage hike.

Photo Credit: United Workers

Overcoming an intense anti-union campaign by their employer, 130 temporary workers responsible for cleaning Baltimore’s Oriole Park have voted overwhelmingly to join AFSCME Maryland.

The historic victory follows a successful, three-year AFSCME-backed campaign by this contingent workforce – then members of the community-based human rights organization United Workers – to earn a living wage ($11.30 an hour in the Baltimore area).

The increase became effective this spring after the Maryland Stadium Authority hired an international multiservice agency, Chimes Inc., to clean Oriole Park at Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium, home of the Baltimore Ravens football team. The crew attempted to build on their wage-hike win by forming a union with AFSCME, but Chimes launched a campaign of intimidation. Workers were forced to attend anti-union meetings and received paychecks accompanied with literature denouncing organizers as liars.

“We took years to pull ourselves up,” says stadium worker Tanya Diggins. “We weren't going to let Chimes push us back down.”

The crew saw through those deceitful tactics, however.

Read more about their remarkable achievement in the The Baltimore Sun and the Baltimore Independent Media Center.