NEWS RELEASE PRESS RELEASE
PACE INT'L. UNION, AFL-CIO/CLC

For immediate release: January 14, 1999
CONTACT: Joe Drexler, PACE Special Projects Director,   
         (303) 987-5329
         Scott Douglas, Greater Birmingham Ministries   
         Executive Director, (205) 326-6821 

     LAKEWOOD, COLO. - The Paper, Allied-Industrial,
Chemical and Energy Workers Union (PACE, formerly the
OCAW) today applauded the decision of Greater Birmingham
Ministries (GBM) to endorse the growing boycott against
Crown Central Petroleum, which has engaged in a
three-year lockout of union workers and has been accused
of serious civil rights violations and environmental
racism.

     "As we approach the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr.'s birthday, there is no better way to honor him
than to endorse this boycott," said Robert Wages, PACE
Executive Vice-President.

     "We look forward to working closely with Greater
Birmingham Ministries and other Alabama groups in
expanding the boycott," Wages said.

     Greater Birmingham Ministries' resolution in support
of the boycott included a letter to Crown CEO Henry
Rosenberg.  The letter reviews the Ministries'
faith-based concern for worker rights, and then notes
with concern that the lockout has now lasted nearly three
full years and that alarming charges of discrimination
against women and African-Americans have persisted
throughout the lockout.  The letter concludes, "Until the
lockout is ended and steps toward new talks are
undertaken, we believe we must support the boycott of
Crown products."

     "Our board made a careful and thoughtful decision in
this important matter," said Scott Douglas, Executive
Director of Greater Birmingham Ministries.  "We sought
and received extensive information from both Crown and
the former OCAW, as well as consulted with organizations
with whom we work closely on behalf of low-income,
economically vulnerable people.  The decision to support
the boycott emerged clearly and directly from that
process and our own guiding commitment to economic
justice."

     GBM is a thirty-year-old interfaith social service
agency sponsored by ten major Christian denominations,
the Birmingham's Reformed Jewish synagogue, and the
Unitarian Church in Birmingham.
The campaign against Crown has also received endorsements
from the National Baptist Convention, Baltimore
Ministerial Alliance, Interfaith Center for Worker
Justice, NAACP, Baltimore City Council, National
Organization of Women chapters in Texas and Maryland,
National Black Caucus of State Legislators, AFL-CIO,
Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, and the Natural
Resources Defense Council.

     Crown locked out 252 union members at its Pasadena,
Texas, refinery in February, 1996 after workers refused
to strike.  Crown used phony arguments of sabotage to
legitimize the lockout.  The company has been sued for
violations of the Civil Rights Act and environmental
laws.  In August 1995, Crown received the largest air
pollution fine in Texas history for contaminating the
largely, low-income and Latino neighborhoods which
surround the refinery.

     Crown Central Petroleum operates gas stations and
Fast Fare and Zippy Mart convenience stores in Maryland
and throughout the South.