As Game Workers Unite co-founder and tech industry labor organizer Emma Kinema said in her recent XOXO speech, Kickstarter's mission to democratize the way in which people create art, music, games, tech, and writing is a noble and important pursuit, and it is only natural that it is at Kickstarter where we are seeing one of the first tangible signs of democratizing a tech industry workplace through unionization. Workers throughout tech, games, and many traditionally unorganized industries are watching, cheering on, and standing with the workers of Kickstarter in solidarity. Kickstarter United has sparked all of our imaginations and have our fullest support. Stand with them today!

The dress code policy at Loves Travel Stop is outdated. They need to change their policies about hair coloration. I’ve had several employees harassed and severely upset with the corporation due to these policies. Hard workers shouldn’t lose their jobs over the color of their hair.

This is important to us as Katy Langford is a great bus driver who has always cared about the safety and well-being of our children. Our children loved riding Mrs Katy’s bus and I never had to worry! She has great communication skills and would regularly send updates with information regarding bus times, changes, or activities. Katy took pride in her job and she did it very well!

On July 23, 2019 the FMCSA posted a request for comments to study what they called a “serious pattern of harassment and assault related crimes against female and minority male truckers.”. For over a decade, harassment and sexual assault in entry-level driver training programs has been well-documented and grossly overlooked by the trucking industry and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the regulatory agency that is tasked with overseeing safety in the trucking industry. We need a plan of action to address this pattern of abuse and bring about meaningful change NOW! The FMCSA has ignored widely available public information and extensive reporting on rampant sexual assault and rape long-endemic to the trucking industry. The FMCSA should immediately place carriers where sexual assault and rape continue to occur on probation—and disallow repeat offenders from recruitment to their driver training programs until they clean up their act. Without a meaningful and urgent implementation plan, the FMCSA’s request for comments is without teeth—a simple stalling technique and a free pass for the trucking industry. My name is Desiree Wood and I am the President and Founder of REAL Women in Trucking, Inc. (RWIT), a 501 (c) (6) organization. I am also a truck driver myself that experienced sexual misconduct and several potentially violent situations during my truck driver training from 2007-2008 at Covenant Transport, based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. As a student truck driver, I was badgered to discuss sex with a co-driver and I also experienced intimidation, culminating in a violent altercation in which bleach was sprayed at my face. During this altercation, my wrist was badly injured while I tried to send an SOS message to the company over the Qualcomm, the only communication device available to me to seek assistance from my company. My co-driver forcefully yanked from my arms to prevent me from calling for help. I was left behind in New Mexico for several days, a place where I knew no one, while my violent co-driver that had sprayed me with bleach was permitted to continue driving the tractor-trailer. He was highly intoxicated after consuming five Long Island Ice teas and was permitted to operate the commercial motor vehicle on Interstate 40 while I was left behind. When I reported the incident to the Human Resources department at Covenant Transport, they told me they would investigate—but they never did. Even though the incident was likely captured by security cameras and I had filed a police report—the company instead turned their attention to me as a troublemaker. I formed REAL Women in Trucking, Inc. (RWIT) with other lady truck drivers as a protest movement and in a response to the ENABLERS IN THE TRUCKING INDUSTRY AND THE ABSENCE OF AUTHENTIC REPRESENTATION FOR WOMEN WHO WORK AS TRUCK DRIVERS. Our mission is to deliver highway safety through leadership, mentorship, education and advocacy. RWIT has formed into a growing community of women truck drivers that offers support to new truck drivers and we demand change in the trucking industry. RWIT is known as the “go to” organization when it comes to sexual assault and harassment in truck driver training; we offer support and resources to women entering the industry when they otherwise would have nowhere to turn, but it’s not enough. Over the past decade, I’ve personally received weekly distress calls and email from hundreds of women across the country who have had similar or worse experiences during their driver training. In just the past two years, distress calls to our organization have INCREASED at an alarming rate. SEPERATING GENDERS IS NOT THE ANSWER TO THIS PROBLEM SINCE WOMEN HAVE REPORTED BEING ASSAULTED BY WOMEN BOTH PHYSICALLY AND SEXUALLY! The solution to this issue begins with removing rapists and harassers from truck driver training fleets along with the enablers that allow them to thrive. The FMCSA is directly responsible for overseeing entry-level truck driver training programs and they have blatantly ignored this issue long enough. No more paper tiger advisory committees and comment collections that deliver nothing and end up appointing known industry enablers to oversee the issues in these training fleets. Please sign this petition from the REAL Women in Trucking to call on the FMCSA to take immediate action.

My name is Patricia Wilkerson and I worked at Lowe’s in Dayton, TX for over 15 years. I’m left without a job and without severance pay It has been very difficult not being given a permanent job and having been laid off twice from Lowe’s. I have had to work for cash as a design assistant and personal driver off and on to scrape by and even my grown children have had to help me . As a result, I'm behind on my mortgage and could lose my home. Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison has shut down stores across the country and fired thousands of employees in order to increase profits for top executives. This isn’t right. Ellison needs to take responsibility for destroying our jobs and offer support for struggling families like mine who have been serving this company for years. This is the same corporate greed that is hurting hundreds of thousands of working people and our families at other retailers – and it needs to end. We call on Lowe’s to pay severance to store employees whose jobs he destroyed. For every year worked, we call for a week’s worth of pay. We further call on him to take steps to protect the jobs that remain at Lowe’s, so that our former coworkers have more assurance that their lives won't be thrown into chaos, as mine has been. Thanks for standing with us. By signing up, you are agreeing to receive updates from United for Respect. You can unsubscribe or update your preferences at any time. Message and data rates may apply. Text HELP for more information. Text STOP to stop receiving messages.

Cordell Walker has been working the front desk at the Dorchester House for over 5 years. Last month, he was unceremoniously removed from his post at the Dorchester, effective immediately, with a thin, unsubstantiated justification. We are asking that he be reinstated immediately. Anyone who has walked by the Dorchester's front desk during Cordell's shift --typically 11pm-3pm on weekends-- is likely familiar with his warm and reassuring presence. Often, one or more residents is standing at the desk chatting with Cordell, staying longer than they need to pick up their package or readjust from the outside weather, and doing so because he is there. He is warm, funny, dedicated and professional to the residents and to his colleagues, often training new employees and/or picking up other shifts despite working difficult overnight hours. To many of us, he has become a, if not the, face of the Dorchester House, one that makes this place feel like a community and a home and who exemplifies why we would choose to live in this building. We, the residents, appreciate all the contributions Cordell has made to our community and urge his employer to do the same. We want Cordell back at the Dorchester!

We are a group of Luggers who want to help Lugg become a better workplace: Happy Luggers, happy customers, happy investors. Luggers are the marketers, ambassadors, and promoters of your company. We interphase with customers all day, and we want to do a good job every time. We are professional and hard workers. However, Lugg makes our lives unnecessarily miserable every day at work. Drivers and helpers sometimes get deactivated without knowing why, and Lugg has a practice of cancelling work shifts as punishment. When we ask for clarification, we get ignored, scolded, and belittled. We take working at Lugg seriously, and we are willing to put in all the energy and endless hours because we need the job, it is a main source of income for us and our families. When we are deactivated, we fall behind on our bills, and it hurts our livelihood, which is demoralizing. We invest so much of our time to working for Lugg, that we give up on other jobs, and other opportunities for making income. Sometimes there are no jobs provided during our scheduled shifts with Lugg, and we end up having to be on-call, waiting for jobs that never come, without pay. If we request to clock-out while waiting, we are told that we are the only crew available, and that we need to stop spamming with our request. If we insist, we get ignored. We don’t want to clock-out, we want to work, we need income! But we fear being kicked out of the platform for asking Lugg to free-up our time when they don’t give us work. Lugg has a policy of cancelling all future shifts as punishment for pausing or stopping work with no consideration for the circumstances, if we don’t do it 24 hours in advance. One Lugger had a family member in the hospital fighting for life, and needed to attend this emergency, so he notified Lugg asking to get the rest of that day off. Lugg deleted all future shifts and restricted him from scheduling work for a week, leaving him with no income in the middle of his medical emergency. Another Lugger suffered a small accident while on-the-job, hurting his foot. He finished his shift with his foot hurt, and asked Lugg for a couple days off to recover, but Lugg cancelled all of his future shifts as punishment, anyway. We have to beg Lugg for a couple minutes to use the bathroom or take a break, as they are tracking us at every moment and every place where we are. We always work in pairs. Customers are only able to review both workers together with the same ranking applying to both, even if one may have performed better or worse than the other. This ranking affects our opportunity for higher pay and better shifts. Lugg assigns work shifts based on a priority system. Workers with Priority 1 get the first pick on shifts and a higher pay. To escalate from priority 3 to 2 to 1, a worker must maintain a high customer ranking individually, but the ranking affects both Luggers. Our lives are full of uncertainty, not knowing when Lugg may terminate us on a whim, or when we may get a negative review because of someone else’s performance, and lose our job. We suffer high levels of stress, with no health insurance. Many of us are responsible for our children’s future. Jordan Brown, Lugg CEO, as a new parent would understand the importance of steady income to support our kids. We have to pay rent, take care of ourselves. We are very frustrated but we want to make it work. If these things are fixed, the quality of our lives can improve, and our happiness will increase: Happy Luggers, happy customers, happy investors. Whether you are a driver, a helper, a customer, or a member of the community, we invite you to support our effort to demand that Lugg improves the way it treats its workers. Thank you!

My name is Adelaide Smith and I am a former barista and coffee equipment technician at Enrico’s Tazza D’Oro. I started working as a barista at the Highland Park location in April 2017 and have been with the company as it expanded from two cafes, to four cafes and a training lab. When I first started, it was clear that the management structure was somewhat disorganized and not totally functional, but as the new cafes opened, the situation became much worse. Stores have gone months at a time with no manager, so managing responsibilities were piled onto assistant manager and barista workloads. This resulted in day to day operations becoming increasingly stressful for baristas. When that trickled into bad experiences for customers, upper management would show up to hassle the staff about their performance and general attitude, leaving no opportunities for productive discourse. In the context of this managerial chaos, myself and other women consistently received lower scores on job evaluations compared to our few male coworkers, despite working for a company owned by a progressive woman. As a direct result of this disparity, men became eligible for higher raises then women at the barista level. This is a great example of how a well-intentioned feminist can perpetuate gender-based wage disparities in the workplace by failing to implement systems and structures that insure just and equitable working conditions. I don’t believe the owner wants gender-based discrimination to be happening anywhere, but the current structure of her own business makes the issue difficult to address. The owner, Amy Enrico, has a history of retaliating against workers who speak out. In one such instance, where two baristas were fired after bringing up concerns at a staff meeting, the National Labor Relations Board was prepared to back the workers in a federal suit, though Tazza and the employees settled out of court. Throughout the various locations staff have been intimidated and harassed by management in retaliation to collective concerns and issues that baristas had no power over. As the equipment tech and part of the coffee quality control team, I would look into any situations where coffee quality was below our standards. On three specific occasions at the Millvale cafe, management came down on the entire barista staff accusing them of making bad coffee, when the problem was out of their control. I pinpointed the equipment issues that compromised our standards and made the issues known to management, but management continued to hassle the baristas until I was able to fix the issues and show that with properly functioning machinery, the coffee was not just adequate, but better than the other locations. Workers at the Millvale location have been targeted and blamed for the poor performance of the store despite their earnest attempts to make that cafe thrive. When management got onto them about evening shifts taking too long, staff worked off the clock to make sure the cafe was stocked and clean for the morning shift. In April of this year, the Millvale staff was told their jobs had been eliminated and the store was closed with only a day’s notice. Later that day on their social media accounts, Tazza D’Oro claimed they would just be closing the Millvale cafe for only a week and reopening the following Tuesday. After the fired workers organized a picket, the plans to reopen the store were postponed. One of the workers was able to pick up part-time work at another location, while the other four are trying to make it by on unemployment. I know these kinds of issues are commonplace in the restaurant industry, but they don’t have to be! We’re calling on Tazza D’Oro to do the right thing and sit down with us, develop a plan to restructure the company, and pay severance to the laid-off Millvale workers.

Next to members and residents, staff are the organization's most important asset and the key way the organization fulfills its mission. Like non-profit workers everywhere, we are committed to serving this mission, whether on the streets of Harlem or the halls of government, with great pride. But our current working environment is needlessly unsustainable. It is leading to high turnover and poor staff health, and impacting our programs and partnerships. As a staff made up of predominantly women, people of color, low-income, and residents of Northern Manhattan, we draw inspiration from our co-founders bold action on the West Side Highway in 1988. Their courageous example demonstrates that taking a stand for justice can sometimes be uncomfortable, but it is always the right thing to do. Through a union, we are reaffirming our commitment to WE ACT's mission. Together with management, we will find solutions to common challenges and reinvest in the organization's long-term success. More and more non-profit organizations are recognizing the value that a unionized workforce offers -- and we are confident that WE ACT will join this growing list soon. After all, New York City is a "Union Town." In view of our present climate crisis and the continued exclusion of low-income people of color from important political and environmental decisions, our members, supporters, and communities everywhere deserve only the best and strongest WE ACT we can build. WE are WE ACT and THIS is environmental justice!

Graduate Tutors work closely with English Learner and Newcomer students — students who have recently arrived in the United States from another country. Cutting Graduate Tutor jobs would have a devastating impact on individual student achievement and would eliminate one of the only safety nets this demographic, and the other students who receive additional academic support from Graduate Tutors can consistently rely on for individualized, small group support. One thing is very clear: Without graduate tutors, students, parents, teachers — everyone loses. ¿Porque es importante? Los tutores graduados trabajan en estrecha colaboración con estudiantes de inglés, estudiantes nuevas a la comunidad, y estudiantes que han llegado recientemente a los Estados Unidos desde otro país. Recortar trabajos de tutores graduados tendría un impacto devastador en el rendimiento individual de los estudiantes y eliminaría una de las únicas redes de seguridad de este grupo demográfico, y otros estudiantes que reciben apoyo académico adicional de los tutores graduados que hoy en día pueden contar con el apoyo individualizado en grupos pequeños. Una cosa está muy clara: sin tutores graduados, estudiantes, padres, maestros: todos pierden.

My name is Kathleen Hendricks, I have spina bifida and hydrocephalus, and I’ve worked at Walmart in Texas for 19 years as a greeter. Last year, Walmart raised the lifting requirements for greeter positions and told me I wouldn’t be able to greet anymore. After a series of requests to be moved into a different position, I was finally reassigned to the fitting room where I answered phones, helped customers, and processed returns. After a few months, Walmart started cutting my hours. Eventually, my manager stopped putting me on the schedule altogether because I can’t climb a ladder with my wheelchair. I loved my job at Walmart. I don’t know what I’m going to do to find another one after almost two decades. It feels like Walmart doesn’t want me – or any other employees with disabilities –at the store anymore. Unfortunately, my story is not unique. This is happening to associates with disabilities like me all across the country — we’re being pushed out of our jobs. Join me and sign this petition.

The 800 workers who helped with community management, marketing games, running eSports, legal, and so much more are all far more valuable than the CEO. When making the decision to cut someone from Activision we'd choose to #FireBobbyKotick every time. Bobby Kotick has been raking in $30 million dollars a year as Activision CEO, that massive income doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from the labor of his employees. Kotick's wealth is built from the stolen wages of his workers. [1] Activision, under Kotick's leadership, gave a $15 million dollar bonus to the CFO *just for changing his job title* then they have the gall to turn around and lay off 800 workers just days later? [2] It's disgusting to hear Kotick boasting about record revenue for the company then announcing an 8% staffing cut in the next breath. Kotick was especially proud to announce the 9% bump to stockholder values. That 9% comes from our labor. [3] Please sign this petition in solidarity and send a message to Activision Blizzard's c-suite that we won't let their greed ruin the games we love and uproot the lives of workers anymore! Sources: 1. https://kotaku.com/activisions-ceo-made-28-6-million-last-year-300-times-1825715966 2. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/activision-gives-15-million-sweetener-to-new-cfo-dennis-durkin 3. https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/yw83kg/activision-blizzard-reports-record-revenue-as-they-fuck-over-800-employees