SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE! Although Black workers at Guy Fieri’s Kitchen & Bar Westmoreland have more professional experience, they are being paid LOWER WAGES than their white counterparts. This was brought to light following a recent racially charged incident, where a restaurant manager openly used the word “N****R” in front of several employees, while ordering a worker to turn off the music. Nate Ridley, a Black worker who was present when the racist remark was made, formally filed a complaint with LIVE! Casino’s HR department after the incident and put in his two weeks notice. It is unacceptable that the job he was once excited about had allowed such discrimination and disrespect to happen. The HR department did not immediately respond to Ridley’s grievance and he was expected to continue to work alongside the manager who made the racial slur. Ridley then connected with ROC-PA, which led to the discovery of the pay disparity between Black and white workers. When management was asked about the pay discrepancy, workers were told not to discuss wages with others. After ROC first circulated this petition, the LIVE! Casino’s HR department finally responded, saying that they would “look into the situation.” The management advised workers to “be careful signing petitions.” To date, Ridley has yet to receive an apology from the upper management of Guy’s Kitchen & Bar. We believe that everyone has the right to a workplace free of discrimination and harassment. As employees, we demand accountability, action and fair wages!

They make less than a server and do all the servers work for them. It’s not equal pay. And can’t live off 2.83 an hour.

A very large portion of your call representatives are on the verge of quitting and live in constant fear of being fired. We are mentally drained, exhausted, frustrated, and our mental and physical health is suffering. Unfulfilled promises to IMPROVE and THINGS ARE GETTING WORSE INSTEAD OF BETTER!!!!

Our tax and tuition dollars are driving poverty for immigrant workers at George Mason University. The university should pay people a decent wage and have high standards for all contractors. Their janitorial staff are forced to come to work after being exposed to COVID, they are shorted on hours and intimidated. On construction projects, the contractors use labor brokers that violate labor laws. We want GMU to adopt a strong responsible contractor policy. We want the new Virginia Square campus in Arlington to be built by union workers who have more job protections, and have apprenticeship opportunities for people in our community.

The upcoming third wave and the spread of the mutations of the Corona virus that are more infectious demand for a strong response. Regular testing is an important measure to identify Covid clusters quickly, allow contact tracing, and thus help to keep the infection numbers low. We must do everything we can to have low infection numbers rates to prevent even more dangerous mutations!

This has been an incredibly difficult year for all of us. We, the teachers, are so incredibly grateful to be in a career field where, in these unsteady times, work will almost always be available to us. We are also blessed to play such an influential role in the lives of our students. The winter storm that tore through many of our homes, not even a year after the chaos that has been COVID-19, has been devastating to many of our staff. Our physical and mental health has taken a beating, and we desperately need respite. A week without heat in a winter storm is not that. A week of our homes incurring damage is not that. A week without the ability to take a shower and flush the toilet, having to wait outside grocery stores in freezing temperatures, only to be turned away, is not that. Spring Break 2021 is necessary in order to be of adequate mental health to provide our students with what they need. It is necessary to care for ourselves in order to be able to best care for one another as well. In addition, many staff members have already invested financially in plans for Spring Break 2021. Most of these plans involve spending time with family members we haven’t seen since COVID-19 began. With the newly established vaccines, many of are just now able to safely reunite with our loved ones and properly pay our respects to those we’ve lost. To deprive your hard-working staff of this much needed time off is to create unhealthy work conditions—at best. Lastly, you will find that our community of parents and neighbors are in full support of this petition, indicated by their signatures alongside ours. We hope that our petition will be heard and considered thoughtfully. Thank you.

Whole Foods can afford to do better. The grocery store chain and its parent company, Amazon, are raking in profits during the pandemic. To slow the spread of the virus among Whole Foods employees and customers, CEO John Mackey needs to immediately institute a permanent comprehensive paid leave policy. That includes guaranteed paid sick time, paid family and medical leave, and paid time off to be vaccinated. Join us and Whole Foods employees in calling on Whole Foods to live up to their virtues by giving their employees the opportunity to put their wellness and their families first now and in the future.

Almost exactly a year ago, we saw corporations calling grocery workers “heroes” — what a difference a year makes! A new company-wide policy on team member meal and rest periods which went into effect on February 8th has shortened our breaks from 15 minutes to 10. The policy change has affected different regions in different ways. Many stores offered two paid 15 minute breaks per shift - under the new policy, all they get is 10. Some stores offered workers a paid 30 minute lunch break - under the new policy, that break will no longer be paid. Whole Foods claims that they are doing this to “streamline regional processes and policies.” In reality, they are bringing every store in America down to the bare minimum. This policy was designed to offer us as little break time and as little pay as the law will permit. Jeff Bezos' net worth grew by $75 billion last year. Now Amazon/Whole Foods is forcing their lowest paid employees to sacrifice paid rest time on the job. Is this how we’re thanked for working through a pandemic? We risk our lives every day to keep these stores stocked and clean. We’ve earned our breaks! Let’s send a message to Amazon and Whole Foods: these changes are unacceptable. If you’re a Whole Foods worker and you want to fight back, reach out to us. Together, we can hold Whole Foods accountable for its unfair policies. In Solidarity, Whole Worker and the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee

The current coffee academy is not working. Partners can no longer get the title or the apron for being a coffee master. Instead baristas can spend hours completing a free online course on coffee. The program is unpaid and there is no incentive to complete the program. Coffee master used to be one of the coolest parts of working at Starbucks. Partners and customers would look up to coffee masters if they had questions or wanted to learn more about coffee. Coffee masters were there to support and help partners learn more about coffee. Currently, customers are no longer getting their questions answered about how to brew coffee. They can no longer get a roast recommendation based off of their personal preferences. Many partners haven't even tried a majority of Starbucks roasts. Something needs to change.

For the last year, essential workers - such as grocery store clerks, bus drivers, and people in food service - have been working through a pandemic to ensure that families can continue to eat and stay alive. We are truly public servants, risking infection from the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its mutations in service of the general public. Workers can’t control other people, such as those we interact with daily who do not take this pandemic seriously. We are tired of putting on a friendly tone to ask customers, coworkers, and managers to please pull their masks over their noses. We are exhausted from going to work day after day, not knowing if today might be the day we bring home the virus that could kill us or our family members. Our field is diverse; we are Black, disabled, immigrant, indigenous, Latinx, parents, students, working class. The federal government’s National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness calls for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. We urge you to listen to experts who say that essential workers should be vaccinated now. Consider our sacrifices over the past year, and commit to repaying us by prioritizing us for the vaccine.

Nursing assistants are the lowest paid. They usually make minimum wage or slightly over. They are the manual labor of the health care industry, physically working very hard. Like everyone they have family and home obligations or work elsewhere. These polices are not used or enforced on any other type of healthcare worker other than CNA's or Nurses.

It’s important to make sure we all feel like we are being heard. That everyone feels we are being fair in work place and not that other people have to work harder then others because they “aren’t used to working in those conditions” If people don’t feel like they are being heard they feel like they don’t matter.