Drag performers attract paying customers, and keep the San Francisco Bay Area weird and amazing. Often our community incurs high costs with little return for our labor. We’re amazing people to work with and we support a slew of other paid roles in our event production. If this isn’t enough to convince you, keep reading. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ We want that San Francisco Bay Area bars, clubs, and other employers of drag entertainment ensure that each drag performer and staff receive AT LEAST $40 per show: $40 = 2 numbers max, no more than 2 hours at the venue. *Tips only agreements: the employer must close the gap if $40 minimum is not made in tips. **Open spots (i.e. Club Poppers): technically, no one is “booked.” Participation is at the promoters’ and performers’ discretion. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My name is Alexis Atauri and I am a drag queen in San Francisco. For the past 3 years, I have cried, laughed, lived, and loved with a community of performers, DJ’s, lighting designers, wig makers, and other talented artists in the Bay Area. A true labor of love, I’ve seen my community sacrifice so much to continue to push the boundaries of gender expression, art, and weirdness while still advocating and creating space for everyone. It’s never going to be easy, and we wouldn’t want it to be. However, despite the ongoing conversation about dignified pay in our community, we are not organizing action around this conversation. Some venues pay well; some don’t. Regardless of our skill and experience, don’t we all deserve to expect a minimum booking fee if we are asked to share our drag? I believe we do and I want to fight for better pay for us all. We want a fair return on our Labor. This is no different from dancers, makeup artists, hair stylists, and other artists. We want employers to take us just as seriously when requesting our services so that we can establish and sustain good working relationships, and quality performances for customers to keep coming back. Knowing that the venues where we work support fair treatment and dignified paid for all workers, including us, can only improve our art. It can’t hurt. A minimum of $40/performer is more than a reasonable cost for anyone booking drag in the Bay Area. It doesn’t make performers who get paid more suddenly receive less compensation. It doesn’t force newer queens to hustle or have a traumatic experience starting out in drag. It will discourage performers from price gouging each other. Ultimately, it will allow our community to continue to exist and thrive in a financially tumultuous city. Awareness is an important part of this conversation. Audience members, employers, and corporations (i.e. people who don’t do drag) don’t know firsthand what it takes to produce a look, a performance, or even just a face. Encouraging transparency about the cost and compensation of drag may encourage audience members and employers to better value our productions with tips, increased budgets, or even perks like free drinks, VIP access, or free guest entry. Bay Area drag is diverse, so I expect the opinions surrounding this conversation to also be dissonant, but constructive. The important part - or “Why?” - is that we have this conversation and take action. The cost of sustaining drag is no joke. Most of the time a night’s pay (including tips) doesn’t cover the cost of the makeup, costume, and transportation to support the event. I admire Bay Area Drag performers’ ability to be creative about reusing content, sourcing cheap materials, and working side gigs while still delivering top-notch performances. A minimum booking fee will only help us continue to thrive in performances and other hustles. The more money invested into us, the more fabulosity we can put out, and the more customers we can attract for bars/clubs. Making sure this conversation is inclusive of other roles and performers in our drag scene is important, too. We wouldn’t shine as bright without our DJ’s, handlers, door staff, and stage managers, for example. Fighting for pay for all can only increase the quality of the entertainment we produce, increasing the patronage to the bar/club as well. It also stands to mention I feel that pole dancers, voguers, burlesque, puppet masters, and anyone who is on stage with us deserve fair compensation and the audience’s attention; they are included in this conversation about drag compensation. I believe anyone who is asked to spend their time and talent to be a part of a drag production should be included in the budget, and employers should also value them alongside drag performers. Everyone’s work deserves to be dignified and should be compensated fairly. What is the importance of drag in the community, anyway? Hopefully, you scoffed at this rhetorical question. The first largely recognized social rights movement for LGBTQIA was started by a black, transgender drag queen in New York City. We provide spaces for those in the community that are often cast aside, celebrating their queerness and providing the means for them to thrive in the bay. Look no further than the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to see that donning a look and exaggerating your personality is an effective way to serve our community where they are most in need. We keep San Francisco Bay Area weird. We support other artists. We give you something sparkly to look at when you’re out. We sustain safe spaces. Drag has always been there for our community, and we are the best version of ourselves when the community is there for us, too. I hope you can stand beside us and support our efforts! XOXO Alexis Atauri

This company has billions of dollars and spending on other technology. They can pay us the minimum of $15hr with no problem! There customer service department is not the great! There advertising is false and I think they should be held accountable! People deserve paid decent paying wage. As a past driver it's alot dealing with people, traffic and tending to your car, car insurance payments and dealing with disputes. Pay drivers hourly and they need benefits alot drive for 8 hours a day or more!

My name is Mostafa Maklad and I have been an Uber driver since 2014. I’ve given 8,000 rides, usually driving between 50-60 hours a week — though sometimes it’s 80. The living hourly wage — the amount of money one needs to earn to afford housing, food, medical care and transportation — is about $20 for a single adult in San Francisco; I routinely make half that. Because of this, I joined the international Uber Shut Down on May 8th. Together, drivers made history. Rideshare drivers in six countries across the world organized a global day of action protesting Uber's IPO. In the U.S., over 10 cities joined in including Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Drivers in every city stood together to call on Uber to pay us a living wage and treat us with dignity and respect. Uber drivers provide services that so many rely on every day to move through their lives — rides to school, work, medical appointments, social events and safe passage back home. As drivers, we pour ourselves into our work, doing one of the most dangerous jobs in our society to ensure that every passenger arrives safely at their destination. But Uber excludes us from basic worker protections. Without these protections, we face low wages and labor abuses. We have no way to organize and Uber denies us crucial benefits like health insurance, disability, overtime or workers comp. We face unsafe working conditions and have no recourse when we're deactivated. Drivers take all the risk, executives get all the reward. But now, we are calling on Uber to give us our fair share: - Living wage: Uber must pay drivers a livable hourly rate (after expenses). - Transparency: Clear policies on wages, tips, fare breakdowns and deactivations. - Benefits: Such as disability, workers comp, retirement, health care, death benefits, and paid time off. - Voice at work: A recognized independent worker organization, the freedom to stand together without fear of retaliation and a fair and transparent process for deactivations. Sign on now to stand with drivers!

My name is Mostafa Maklad and I am an Uber driver in San Francisco. I've been a driver for 3 years and have given over 8000 rides on Uber. Uber is about to launch their IPO, which will put billions in the pockets of executives. But I can't help but wonder: what will drivers get? Uber and Lyft drivers provide services that so many people rely on every day to move through their lives — rides to school, work, medical appointments, social events and safe passage back home. As drivers, we pour ourselves into our work, doing one of the most dangerous jobs in our society to ensure that every passenger arrives safely at their destination. But Uber denies rideshare drivers like me a living wage by constantly slashing rates and pocketing the difference. Drivers should make a living wage. California has always been a leader in protecting workers and now it is time for California to take the lead again - drivers need a living wage.

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!

Because they don't offer any help with car repairs and only give a 1 dollar for gas per order, even if it is 12 miles away. It's not fair. I'm doing all the work and they get to use my own tip money for their guaranteed pay.

When a customer pays the tip with a credit card, the money doesn’t always go to the server. Many restaurants allow customers to pay the bill and the tip with their credit card instead of cash. Credit card companies charge separate fees to process both of these transactions. Because the tip has to be processed through the restaurant, the restaurant can legally take a percentage of each tip to pay the transaction fee. In short, restaurants are taking the tip you gave to the employee to pay a business expense. In many states, servers are only guaranteed $2.13 per hour. The rest of our pay comes directly from guests in the form of the tip. This is an incredibly unstable way to make a living because it’s only social custom that obliges a patron to leave a tip. Regardless of how hard we work or how much the bill is, only the customer’s conscience determines how much we are paid. Meanwhile, if a guest refuses to pay the bill, they could be prosecuted. It is shameful that an industry that doesn’t have to pay its workers a living wage would also steal its workers’ hard-earned money.

I’m a career federal employee who lives in Washington, DC. Despite working without pay during the recent shutdown, I was fortunate enough to have saved enough to cover this unexpected gap in my income. Others – including many TSA employees – were not so lucky. As part of my job, I’ve had to travel during the shutdown. Recently, I arrived at the airport much earlier than usual because I was worried about long security lines. Much to my surprise, there were no lines. The TSA employees were pleasant and professional. They were doing their jobs as they do every day, looking out for us, even when our government isn’t looking out for them. We would never tolerate a major private sector employer forcing their employees to work without pay for weeks and months at a time, and yet, as federal employees, this is a new normal. It’s time to adjust federal pay scales to ensure that our hardworking federal employees at the lowest ends of the pay scale are not tossed into financial jeopardy with every shutdown. Everyone who works for the federal government should be able to accumulate savings. Join me in calling on decision-makers in government to act now by giving a raise to TSA workers and other federal employees who are struggling to make ends meet on their current salaries. *NOTE: Saul Derrity is a pseudonym of the federal employee who started the petition.

We are Instacart workers. Some of us work buying and delivering groceries full-time, and some of us work part-time. Some have been on the platform for just a few months, and some for years. But since November, all of us have seen dramatic cuts in our paychecks. Some of us have seen wages lowered by 30-40% overall. Some of us have had to work twice as many hours just to make ends meet. Now, we’re speaking out to demand that Instacart address these issues by agreeing to a predictable, transparent pay structure. Until Instacart implements these changes, we're asking that customers tip just 22 cents up front in the app (then add your tip after delivery or tip in cash) to show that you support workers. Instacart has changed their pay structure from a predictable system where we knew what each gig would pay and why to a new model where it seems they pay as little as they’re able to get away with, and even use customer tips to get away with paying us less. This means they're offering very low wages that can even fall under the equivalent of the minimum wage. The company claims their new model is more "transparent," but in reality, the new model gives no indication of how pay is actually determined. The pay per job is now inexplicable — and much lower. Under the old model, shoppers were paid a specific base rate per delivery (e.g. $9.25 in Tacoma) and then an item incentive (40 cents per item we picked up). Under the new model, there’s no breakdown of how pay is determined. Shoppers often reject jobs only to see the same jobs re-appear minutes later with slightly higher pay, indicating that Instacart is simply trying to sell the job to the lowest bidder with no other obvious standard for how a given job should be paid. ***THE INSTACART TIP PENALTY*** Instacart is also practicing a sneaky form of tip theft by using customers' tips to subsidize their own costs instead of passing those tips directly on to the workers. Under the new model, Instacart pays less to workers for gigs where customers have left higher tips, so customers' tips are essentially being paid to Instacart rather than to the workers ourselves. If customers don't tip up front, Instacart pays more. This essentially works like a tip penalty, where instead of being "extra," tips are just used to make up for not paying workers decently in the first place. Using tips to subsidize Instacart's costs hurts workers and customers alike. Led by Instacart workers of Washington state: Mia Kelly (Seattle); Corrinne Pettitt (Tacoma); Ashley Knudson (Tacoma); Phoenix Di Corvo (Bremerton); Mark Moran (Seattle); Lori Tripp (Gig Harbor); Hannah Leighton (Bellingham); Ryan Munsell (Lynnwood); Samantha C. Sanabria (Tacoma); Terri Harstad (Bremerton); Julia Mascarella (Seattle); John LeMaster (Lakewood); Austin S. (Bellingham); Josh Siliaga (Seattle); Theresa Herstad (Bremerton); Renee Cable (Federal Way); Kris Sanderson (Mountlake Terrace); Patricia M. (Montesano); Rick Flickenger (Seattle); Rachel Jenkins (Vancouver); Ethan Bendorf (Port Orchard); Caitlin Santos (Steilacoom); April Cipriano (Tacoma); Rhonda Kirkes (Spanaway); Janssen Sartiga (Seattle); Jackie H. (Shoreline); Jaimee S. (Des Moines); Deanna Brewer (Seattle); Dawn Sabatella-Burnam; Jessica Habbe (Seattle); Jessica Clark (Edmonds); Anna Butler (Kent); Eva Skillings (Vancouver); Kristin Klatkiewicz (Kent); Martina B. (Lake Stevens); Michelle Padilla (Marysville); Jamilyn Salas (Tacoma); Alviena Ross (Olympia); Rachel Ross (Spokane); Chelsea Ward (Spokane); Lee Holland (Kent); Angela Sumers (Tacoma); Andrew Lincicome (Monroe); Bryan Sanford (Snohomish)

We do the same, if not more, than management. So how are they paid time and a half on holidays while other AMC employees don't receive holiday pay? They've told me they're not required to by law. I looked into it myself and found out that the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) exempts us (hourly crew) from its overtime requirements “any employee employed by an establishment which is a motion picture theater.” 29 U.S.C. §213(b)(27). The FLSA was enacted in 1936. Movie theaters have drastically change since then -- so have the job requirements and daily job duties of movie theater employees. For example, not all movie theaters only show movies anymore -- they have full service dine-in restaurants that still serve food whether or not you buy a movie ticket. I believe that the movie theater exemption should be taken out of the FLSA in order to truly protect the everyday employee, but even so, that doesn't mean that AMC can't provide greater benefits for its hourly employees right now. I believe companies such as AMC, who make well over a billion dollars in revenue a year (5 billion reported in 2016), can afford to pay the new era of movie theater employees overtime, as well as holiday and sick leave like salaried employees already receive.

More and more drivers are living in their cars. Unable to afford housing based off earnings as a driver, or unable to travel the distance home. More and more drivers are spending less time with their families, seeing their children, or taking care of themselves, because they cannot afford to turn their app off. What once was a reliable way to make income has become a cycle of driving as many hours as possible to barely scrape by. As Uber and Lyft prepare to go public this year with IPO offerings, they are doing everything in their power to show the profitability of their business. And they are doing this by taking more and more money from their drivers. Uber just reached a new low - cutting drivers’ mileage rates from $0.99/mile to $0.68/mile. Not only did Uber decrease the overall mileage rate, they changed the way drivers receive surge pricing - which is an incentive pay that drivers rely on to make a living. Prior to the change, surge pricing was based on a multiplier of the total trip (i.e 1.8x surge would earn the driver an additional 80% on the overall trip). The current change in surge pricing places a flat dollar rate such as $2.50, with a note that claims “you may earn even more than this amount on longer rides.” The key wording here is “may.” Driver experience has shown us that while some trips have added additional surge, others have not. Uber’s lack of transparency on how they formulate and determine surge payouts leaves drivers guessing what their fare will be. Gig Workers Rising is taking action against Uber and Lyft’s unyielding greed. Reverse the rate cuts and give drivers a voice! Join us by taking action and signing our petition.

The workers at MSP, the cleaners, cashiers, servers, cart drivers and more, that make the airport function every day make as little as $10.65. Glen Brown, a wheelchair assistance driver for Delta sub-contractor G2 for three years and a member of SEIU Local 26 said "I live in St. Paul with my wife and kids, so I've seen the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis win the $15 minimum wage for workers in those cities. Why not here at the airport? We deserve the same pay and respect as workers in cities that border the airport!" For Feben Ghilagaber, a UNITE HERE Local 17 member who has worked at the airport for 13 years, $15 is important because "many of my co-workers are parents working 2 jobs. We believe at an airport as wealthy as MSP that one job should be enough!" Thousands of workers would benefit from raising the minimum wage to $15 at the airport, which would pump close to $13 million into the Twin Cities economy through wage increases! Right now, the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) is considering raising the airport minimum wage to $15 One Fair Wage! Please sign this petition to let the MAC know that you support them raising the airport minimum wage to $15 One Fair Wage! Brought to you by: SEIU Local 26, UNITE HERE Local 17 and the Minnesota Airport Workers Council