Workers Demand Developers to Require Living Wages at Baltimore's Inner Harbor

Workers at Baltimore's Inner Harbor announced today that they are demanding that developers require businesses in the development to respect worker rights to a living wage and treatment with dignity.  This is a major development in the United Workers Human Rights Zone campaign, and is also a big step in organizing workers in the new economy.

Workers at retail malls and other tourist centers are divided across sectors and employers.  Within companies, retail and tourist sector employees are divided across huge geographic spaces.  National chains create challenges in uniting workers that must be overcome.  By uniting all workers within a development, and holding developers to account for their role in profiting from poverty zone business models, workers can overcome these challenges.

The United Workers has already proven that temporary day laborers can get organized and win demands. Now it's time to prove that retail and tourist sector employees at national chains can win demands to living wages and other human rights.

Read more from the United Workers on today's announcement:

Two developers control the Inner Harbor: Cordish and GGP. Both profit by turning Baltimore's core business district into a poverty zone, and both are responsible for the working conditions taking place at their developments.

That's why the over 1,000 low-wage workers at the Inner Harbor are getting organized and demanding that the developers set and enforce basic economic human rights standards at their properties. Once these demands are met, the Inner Harbor will be well on its way to being a "Human Rights Zone" for workers, their families and the entire community of Baltimore.

Today the United Workers announced demands on Cordish and GGP that would require all tenants pay workers a living wage and respect other worker human rights. Today's announcement unites all low-wage workers at the Inner Harbor, across sectors and at over two dozen employers.

Today's announcement shifts demands to the top of the Inner Harbor profit chain. Workers recently decided to make this shift to the top following the refusal of Phillips Seafood to even meet with workers, despite an open invitation by workers to face-to-face talks as part of a six month dialogue period. Instead of meeting with workers directly to resolve worker demands, Phillips managers called a mandatory meeting and told workers that the restaurant would be shut down if employees got organized. If just getting to the table required a major fight from each employer, then workers decided it made more sense to wage that fight with the developers - covering all workers all at once.

Workers waited until the end of the 6 month period before meeting internally and discussing the next step. In October, workers voted to shift demands to the developers, tackling the entire Inner Harbor at once and holding the developers directly to account.

Specifically, workers are demanding that each Inner Harbor developer, Cordish and GGP, enter into a binding 15-year economic human rights agreement to require that tenants meet basic human rights standards in order to do business at the Inner Harbor. Standards will include paying all workers at least the state living wage, respecting workers and treating workers with dignity. In addition, developers would pay into a fund to support health care and education programs for workers and their families. Each developer would include the state living wage and worker dignity provisions in all leases at the Inner Habor properties.

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