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Ten people from Pittsburgh traveled to Baltimore on April 18, 2009 for a B’More Fair and a Human Rights March hosted by the United Workers Association (UWA). The United Workers Association is the Human Rights Organization that organized the Camden Yards cleaners, part time workers, “temporary” workers hired through a contractor, by putting pressure on Maryland’s Stadium Authority and Peter Angelos, owner of the Baltimore Oriels Baseball Club. They coined the terms “SweatFree Baseball” in reference to the sweatshop working conditions at Camden Yards at the same time as the Pittsburgh Anti Sweatshop Community Alliance (PASCA) coined the term in reference to its demand that the Pittsburgh Pirates accept the testimony of sweatshop workers sewing Pirates apparel. The UWA came to Pittsburgh for the All Star Game in 2006 and joined with PASCA to make the demand that our local baseball teams respect the Human Rights of all workers.

The UWA interviewed 150 workers at three restaurants in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor development. The interviews demonstrated systemic violations of workers’ rights such as poverty wages and sexual harassment. The UWA has begun to process these worker rights violations by using the International Declaration of Human Rights like a union contract. By declaring the Inner Harbor a Human Rights Zone, the restaurant bosses, the developer, the public officials who provided subsidies to the Inner Harbor developers and the Baltimore community is made aware that the workers know and intend to exercise their Human Rights to remedy violations of their rights.

The enforcement of workers’ Human Rights is different from traditional union organizing in that it emphasizes workers knowing their rights and exercising them rather than a union contract. The emphasis is not on achieving a union contract but on the community of workers that educate one another and provide support to one another on a daily basis.

Earlier this month, Gov. Ed Rendell endorsed an interstate effort to better enforce anti-sweatshop policies. Pennsylvania is the first state to pledge its support for a proposed anti-sweatshop consortium, made up of states, counties and municipalities from across the country.

"Rendell has taken the leadership of states nationally," says Kenneth Miller, who has long been active in local anti-sweatshop campaigns. "He requires the disclosure of factory locations. He requires wage disclosure. And he's taking the leadership in consolidating that information with different jurisdictions."

[Pictured at the right: July 12, 2008 – Kenneth Miller of the Pittsburgh Anti Sweatshop Community Alliance (PASCA), Bjorn Claeson, Executive Director of SweatFree Communities, Dennis Brutus of the Thomas Merton Center, Jay Lantzy, Director, Office of Labor/Management Cooperation, PA DOL represented Governor Ed Rendell, and Howard Jackson of Pittsburgh’s Black Political Empowerment Project. We gathered at a Workers Rights Board Hearing, organized by the Philadelphia Jobs with Justice, to hear worker testimony, celebrate SweatFree Communities 5th Anniversary, and join Governor Rendell’s SweatFree Consortium outreach to his colleagues during the National Governor Association meeting.]

Should the Allegheny County chief executive help local businesses make connections with overseas companies -- even if those businesses may not meet Allegheny's health, labor or human-rights standards?

It's a question that county Councilor Bill Robinson is raising with a new piece of legislation.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - February 1, 2008

Pittsburgh Anti Sweatshop Community Alliance
Contact Kenneth Miller 412-241-1339

The Workers Rights Consortium investigator in Bangladesh has been illegally detained, effectively disappeared. A description of events, confirmed by the US Embassy in Bangladesh: