1199SEIU members at Johns Hopkins Hospital are holding a major rally and march from 12-3pm on Saturday, May 10 at McKeldin Square in downtown Baltimore. The 2,000 service, maintenance and technical employees at are fighting to end poverty pay at the world-renowned hospital.Featured speakers at the Mothers’ March & Rally for Justice at Johns Hopkins include actor and activist Danny Glover as well as The Wire’s Wendell Pierce. The Hopkins caregivers will also be joined by thousands of 1199SEIU members from New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C.The event comes more than two months into heated negotiations for a new union contract at the hospital. Currently, pay at Hopkins is so low many caregivers are on food stamps, Medicaid or other public assistance. Nearly 70 percent of Hopkins caregivers make less than $14.92-an-hour, the wage that qualifies a single parent and child for food stamps.Despite these low wages, Hopkins management has offered only meager raises. The hospital’s current offer contains across-the-board raises that would average just 1.75 percent a year over a proposed five-year contract. Hopkins workers contend that the low pay at Baltimore’s leading hospital is dragging down wage standards for workers all across the city.In order to lift that standard, the Hopkins caregivers held a three-day strike from April 9 to 11 that drew broad support from across Baltimore and inside Hopkins itself.More than 100 Hopkins doctors, medical students and other members of the Hopkins community signed an open letter to hospital President Ronald R. Peterson urging him to settle a fair contract. The open letter, published on April 15 in the Baltimore Sun, encouraged Peterson to offer “employees a higher wage to lift them out of poverty and enrich our Baltimore community.” Hopkins workers made the decision to move forward with the march and rally after the hospital refused to improve its wage offer at the latest bargaining session on Wednesday, April 30. The event will also commemorate the 45th anniversary of Coretta Scott King’s work in Baltimore that helped found the union at Hopkins. In 1969, just a year after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was slain, Mrs. King came to Hopkins and stood with the workers as they formed their union.The Hopkins workers made historic gains in pay and benefits in the contract they won with Mrs. King. Hopkins workers again made dramatic progress in the early 2000s when they won a $10-an-hour minimum wage at the hospital. But since then, hospital management has fought to hold down wages and pay has stagnated.Today, the Hopkins caregivers seek to establish a $15-an-hour fair wage standard. The workers’ current proposal would immediately set a $15-an-hour minimum wage for workers with at least 15 years experience. And it would lift every Hopkins worker with one year of service to at least $14 an hour by the end of a four-year contract.This proposal is a reasonable compromise that the hospital can easily afford. Johns Hopkins Hospital made a $145 million profit on operating revenues of $1.9 billion in fiscal year 2013. And Hopkins is doing even better in 2014, making $94 million in profit in the first half of the current fiscal year.To learn more about the contract campaign and Saturday’s event, visit HardshipAtHopkins.org.- See more at: http://www.1199seiu.org/hopkins_caregivers_holding_major_action_media_blitz_to_end_poverty_pay_at_top_hospital#sthash.QtCMerxs.dpuf