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Submitted on Fri, 06/24/2005 - 11:40pm
(This event was endorsed by the Baltimore IWW)
On June 17, 2005 the United Workers Association held a protest against Orioles owner Peter Angelos at Camden Yards. More than 100 United Workers Association members and their supporters threw “peanuts for poverty wages” at a model of Angelos and passed out peanuts to fans arriving for Friday’s game.
“Peter Angelos is a lying cheat, full of broken promises. He’s a cheating billionaire who says one thing and does another when it comes to ending poverty wages at the ballpark,” said James Riddick, a member of the United Workers Association.
Earlier that day members of the United Workers Association went to Angelos’s office on deliver package of peanuts for poverty wages. Security at Angelos’s office refused the shoe and the peanuts for poverty wages. Afterwards Angelos’s top aide, Tom Murudas, made a veiled threat to sue the organization of homeless and other low-wage workers for saying that Angelos “cheats workers.”
The United Workers Association would welcome a lawsuit between a baseball billionaire like Angelos and the homeless workers who clean up after Angelos’s baseball games.
Angelos’s top aide Marudas called Todd Cherkis, an organizer with the United Workers Association, and left a voice mail to imply that a lawsuit may be in the works over signs charging Angelos with cheating workers and paying peanuts for poverty wages. On the voice mail (which is available for reporters to listen to), Marudas said that the United Workers Association is “on legal softground” and that Angelos is “not going to take kindly to it [the signs].”
“We call Angelos a cheat for lying to workers, and he threatens to sue us. If he thinks we’re going to back down, he’s wrong,” said Riddick.
The United Workers Association organizes the low-wage workers of Maryland.
Why is the United Workers Association focusing on Peter Angelos?
Submitted on Sun, 05/29/2005 - 4:05pm
By Peter Little - Bring the Ruckus
A month ago a call came into the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Hall in Portland. The front-end staff of a small, recently opened restaurant had struck the week before. The owner’s immediate response was to fire all four of the strikers. Although this was the IWW’s first contact with these workers, the union decided to support these workers in negotiating a settlement to the strike.
The negotiating committee of four workers and union representatives arrived at the restaurant at 9:15pm on a Sunday, approaching the owner on the sidewalk as he returned from taking an order on the patio. Catching his attention, they waited until he was through taking his order, and notified him that the IWW would now be representing the fired workers. When the union representatives requested a meeting be set up to discuss resolving the strike, the owner replied, "You are trespassing. If you don't leave my property right now, I’m calling the police." Although this response may seem typical, this was not your typical employer.
