Since Peter Gelb became General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in 2006, he has pushed for sweeping production changes that are radically altering the scope and cost of operations. He has a record-high of new productions that require more labor and hours; HD productions require more expensive and detailed visuals; and extravagant opera productions are driving costs up. This effectively puts the Met on the road to a financial crisis, albeit with good intentions. Many of the men and women who work behind the scenes at the Metropolitan Opera are the most talented in their professions. Six local unions of the IATSE represent backstage employees at the Met, all of whom have made the Opera their life’s work: • Local 1 represents skilled craftsmen who are experts with carpentry, lighting, sound, props, set and building construction. • Local 764 includes costume shop employees who create the costumes, along with dressers who assist the performers with their costumes. • Local 751 are the workers who most frequently interact with the public, box office employees such as Treasurers and Ticket Sellers. • Local 798 are the artists responsible for hair and makeup. • Local 794 represents technicians involved in the Met’s live broadcasts. • USA 829 (Designers and Scenic Artists) represents painters as well as the designers of sets, lighting, costumes, and sound. Help save the Metropolitan Opera: Tell Peter Gelb that cutting worker’s wages and benefits is not a long-term solution to a financial crisis caused by management’s wildly costly new vision. Blaming the backstage stars that make the Met run, without compromising on his own values, is not the sign of a good leader. [1] http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2014/06/the-met-klinghoffer-problem.html

I love teaching anthropology. I take pride in giving students the tools they need to understand unfamiliar cultures and interact with people from different cultural backgrounds. I certainly didn't pursue my PhD for the money. I've amassed tens of thousands of dollars in student debt to help pay for my education, and as adjunct faculty members my husband and I are barely scraping by. With a baby, and in an expensive city like San Diego, it's tough to make ends meet. That's why I was so excited to learn that my employer, Palomar College, could help free me and hundreds of other employees from crushing student debt burdens with the stroke of a pen. Thanks to new Department of Education policies, many teachers like us could be eligible to have their federal student loans completely forgiven after 10 years of on-time loan payments. My husband is also an adjunct, and we have a combined student loan debt of approximately $140,000 -- more than double our anticipated annual household income for the foreseeable future. Getting access to the Public Student Loan Forgiveness program would be a game-changer for our family. The first step in the process is easy: Palomar College just needs to submit paperwork to the Department of Education. Once they do, hundreds of Palomar employees like me could in theory become eligible for loan forgiveness, and their example will make it easier for other colleges to follow suit. Moreover, perhaps more of our students will consider public service careers once they see that it could be a path to debt forgiveness. The large majority of Palomar College’s faculty, like me, work with no job security and receive few benefits. By taking this simple action, Palomar can provide access to debt relief to employees who need it, and also help get the word out about loan forgiveness. As the cost of higher education continues to skyrocket, public service workers and students considering careers in public service need this information more than ever. Please join me and my colleagues in asking Palomar College to immediately begin participating in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

UPDATE: Thanks to you, our efforts are starting to #ChangeZara! In December, Zara workers in NYC received a letter from the US Managing Director, Dilip Patel, saying that workers will receive raises of up to $3 an hour and access to full-time positions. This is a major victory for our campaign and demonstrates that when workers come together, we can make real changes! Our campaign is gaining great momentum, but we still need your support to help bring Dilip Patel to the table and hear our concerns. Please read our petition below and sign and share! ***** First off, let me introduce myself. I’m Jedidiah Labinjo and I work at Zara in New York City. Sharlene Santos, one of the original leaders of the campaign, recently moved out of state so I’ve been inspired to step up and help move the campaign along with my Zara coworkers -- and you! I’ve worked as a sales associate at the Zara store in SoHo for a year. I have been commended by my supervisor for my work ethic and customer service skills, but I’ve yet to see an increase in my pay of $10.50 an hour. I live with my mother and contribute to my family’s bills. I’m also in school full-time studying pre-law, which has helped me think about my rights at work. It’s hard to juggle my priorities of work, school, and family when I have a constantly changing schedule at Zara. Managers are full-time, but we sales associates have a very hard time getting more hours, even though Zara continues hiring more part-time associates. Many associates feel that there is a lot of favoritism in determining who gets the promotions that would make us full-time. Many of my coworkers are students or parents with young children. We all work hard to get by. We earn so little at Zara that many of us can’t even afford to buy the clothes that we sell. With these kinds of poverty schedules, we are forced to choose between bills, rent, and food. So my coworkers and I circulated a petition to address our issues at Zara: low wages, not enough hours, favoritism, and disrespect. When we presented our concerns to a store manager, she said there was nothing she could do. Since we first launched this petition, a delegation of Zara workers from the US traveled to Spain to take our concerns directly to the top company executives as US Management has not agreed to sit down with us collectively for substantive discussions. We’ve been told to discuss problems at work on a one-on-one basis with our managers. But these issues aren’t individual -- they are company-wide. We want Zara’s management to come to the table to hear our #ChangeZara committee’s collective concerns about scheduling, wages, and opportunities for advancement. Zara's hugely profitable parent company, Inditex, is proud of its reputation as a socially responsible business. Zara workers in Spain have a union that grants them a voice at the table -- don't we deserve the same respect here in the US? Join us in our fight to #ChangeZara.

Hi, my name is Juan Rodriguez. I have been working at T-Mobile US in Albuquerque, NM for almost 10 years. I work in the bilingual department and help English and Spanish speaking customers with issues about their phones, their bills or with any other customer service question they might have. My coworkers and I are dedicated employees who love helping our customers. However, T-Mobile does not always treat us with the respect we deserve. Coachings in front of peers and disrespectful treatment for everyone to see are things that most workers at T-Mobile have gone through. I’ve certainly had my fair share of them. Just recently, my manager sent me home for a trivial reason and, without any more information, told me not to come back until further notice. A few days later, and with absolutely no explanation, I was called in and sent back to work. It was a frustrating and scary experience. Losing my job would be devastating - I have a family to support. And being humiliated in front of coworkers, is absolutely unacceptable. But it didn’t stop there. After I got back to work my manager emailed me a document detailing what I supposedly did wrong and asking me to pledge to do better - the thing is, he did not email it only to me, he sent it to the entire call center! Every one of my 700 coworkers received a detailed account of what I was disciplined for. It was deeply humiliating. Another coworker of mine was pulled into a room with his team where his coach played scenes from calls that weren’t optimal. No one knew whose call would be played next and the tension was terrible. Every once in a while the coach put a worker on the spot and asked them what the rep on the call did wrong. People started crying and my coworker got sick after the meeting. These are not isolated incidents. My coworkers and I all across the country know all too well that public humiliation and disrespect are commonplace at T-Mobile. That is not right. This disrespectful treatment has to stop right now! We should have clear and transparent rules and discipline should be respectful. That’s why we demand: 1. All disciplinary coaching* should be conducted off the floor, in private and not in front of peers. 2. Employees should be given the option to invite a co-worker to accompany them when called into a meeting with managers, coach or HR. *Decision Day, step of discipline for attendance or work performance, etc.

Last fall, rumors of privatizing (also called sub-contracting) the MVU cafeteria to The Abbey Group circulated. The MVU cafeteria staff and many other staff are concerned that the school-run program may simply be “eliminated” to save a few dollars. This is not fair. The food service employees are long-term, loyal and committed employees. They have a collective 66 years of service to the school, performed high quality work, and often go above and beyond what they are expected to do, especially for students. All the staff at MVU bring the same level of commitment to the school and the students. The MVU cafeteria workers are being proactive and are asking the MVU Board for something very simple – to adopt a policy that it will not privatize the food service jobs at MVU or any of the work currently being performed by its staff. This is perfectly legal. It doesn’t violate the existing union contract. It doesn’t violate the Municipal Employees Labor Relations Act. It is well within the rights of the Board to pass such a policy. The policy wording we propose would be as follows: “It will be the policy of the Missisquoi Valley Union School Board of Directors to not sub-contract any work currently being performed by employees of the Board.” Contractors, like the Abbey Group, are in business to make money/profit. If they’re going to make money from the school, they will have to cut corners somewhere. Either they will cut services, or the wages they pay to workers, or both. If they cut services, the quality of school food program, in this case, goes down. And if they cut wages, they will get people in to work who are not very qualified, or who will leave as soon as they get a better job. Contractors like Abbey Group often offer no paid sick days or benefits, making the jobs even less livable for working people, causing more turn over in staff. High turnover hurts quality of the food program and it hurts the relationships staff have with the students. Low standards for the food program and its employees are not consistent with the MVU’s values. We encourage you to add your name to encourage the board to adopt this policy. Thank you.

The MAC’s goal is to provide travelers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport “the best airport experience in North America,” and we are the workers who make that experience possible. We take pride in our work, doing important jobs like providing wheelchair and electric cart service to passengers with disabilities and senior passengers, yet we are struggling to survive on poverty wages with no benefits and little training or support. We are calling on the MAC to ensure the workers who provide essential services for rich corporations like Delta are allowed to form a union so they are can get proper training, increase staffing levels, and get paid a living wage and benefits. Please join with us in our fight to end poverty wages at MSP so we can make it an Airport that Works for ALL of Us.

We are Bank of America call center workers. Every day, we help customers with their daily account needs from handling deposits to opening credit card accounts. We are dedicated employees, and value giving our customers the best service possible. However, the bank often does not provide us with training that prepares us to adequately and ethically serve our customers. Much of the training call center employees do receive happens online with no facilitator and no opportunity to ask questions. At work, neither our team leaders nor company’s help desk are able to answer many of our questions that arise. What’s worse: our team leaders and managers are never held accountable when they give us inaccurate information which means that we’re the ones who end up being disciplined and even fired. Team leaders and managers should receive a higher level of training than the associates who report to them, so that they are experts in our policies and procedures. When we take leaves of absence, we’re not given enough time to be trained on new procedures to ensure we’re doing everything according to up-to-date standards. Not only is this frustrating for us as employees, it means that customers won’t get the best possible service. In fact, due to strict performance metrics for employees, we are encouraged to limit our time spent with clients instead of taking the time to answer all of their concerns. We want to be able to do right by our customers and keep our jobs. We have seen too many of our co-workers get fired for making mistakes that adequate training could have prevented. We are asking that independent, federally-guided training be implemented immediately for employees and managers alike. ** UPDATE (from March 2015)! Since we started speaking out about these issues, we’ve seen some improvements to our training. For example, Bank of America introduced a new online banking feature that allows employees to use their mouse to guide their client and navigate them through the online system. But we still need more improvements. Specifically, we would like to see more and up-to-date training on credit cards (that takes into account federal regulations and training); better online banking training; and diligent training and cross training of managers to ensure that they are fully prepared to assist us in handling any difficult situations that arise. We need this to be consistent and up to date so that it reflects the needs of customers and accountability of the bank.

I work at a plant in Selma, Alabama, operated by Renosol, a car parts manufacturer. We make foam for seats that are installed in Hyundai vehicles. Recently, NBC News ran a story about years of safety problems at our plant that have made me and many of my co-workers sick. Read it here: http://nbcnews.to/1jHg6vQ The current round of problems started on May 1, when workers at my plant in Selma were evacuated because of a chemical leak. When I arrived at work, management admitted there had been a leak. They put a “diaper” on the leak—some old rags and plastic—but said a more permanent repair would have to wait until Sunday. Even though workers said they were getting sick from the fumes, we still had to work all day Thursday and Friday. Some people even had to work a 12-hour shift on Saturday. The alarm went off again the next day, and several more times since. OSHA—the federal agency that protects worker safety and health—has been in the plant several times conducting a full investigation. Still, the company refuses to admit anything is wrong. If you're one of the 35,000 workers in the U.S. who work in a foam plant, you already know the chemicals I'm talking about are called isocyanates—chemicals that go by names like TDI and MDI—and that they are widely known to cause asthma, bronchitis, and other chronic health issues. But did you know that it's possible to actually stand up and make our employers pay attention to how TDI and MDI affects our lives? My co-workers and I got sick and tired of waiting for Hyundai and Lear to clean up our plant. We stood together and took our story to the public and the local press. We called in federal health and safety regulators, who have started an inspection of our plant. And we're not stopping there. We won't stop until our plant is safe and we feel our health issues have been addressed. When workers take the courageous step to speak out against dangerous and unhealthy work conditions--like we did--it can spark changes that go far beyond the walls of our own plant. For example, in August OSHA announced that, because of a higher-than-expected number of safety complaints, it is launching a program to inspect every auto supplier in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. Read story here: http://www.autonews.com/article/20140804/OEM01/140809941 As much as we want to change working conditions here in Selma, we know the problem is bigger than just our plant. Every person in the foam seating industry should be able to work without fear of developing a chronic illness from their job. By signing this petition, you'll help show the auto industry that workers in communities and plants across America demand action.

We want the college to maintain dedicated employees and community members. Outsourcing our custodians threatens the quality of the work and the safety of our campus community.

Apple Valley, MN OUR Walmart member, Gabe Teneyuque was instrumental in getting the state's minimum wage passed. Gabe spoke at the State Capitol, collected and delivered petitions and marched to end poverty wages in Minnesota. His courage to speak out and improve lives of Minnesotans across the state should be encouraged. Instead, Walmart fired Gabe for stubbing his toe at work and reporting the injury. Walmart managers claim that Gabe violated Walmart policy by not reporting the injury that same day even thought it didn't start hurting Gabe til days later. No one should be afraid to report a work related injury. Walmart do the right thing and give Gabe his job back. LEGAL DISCLAIMER: OUR Walmart's purpose is to help Walmart employees as individuals or groups in their dealings with Walmart over labor rights and standards and their efforts to have Walmart publicly commit to adhering to labor rights and standards. OUR Walmart has no intent to have Walmart recognize or bargain with it as the representative of Walmart employees.

This is Massachusetts. We are the "Athens of America" and "A city on a Hill." How can our first-rate airport treat its workers as second-class citizens?

Retirees,did there all to make theses Companys' what they could be in this Merger.Retirees have paid there dues over the years,messing out on Family gatherings,childrens'events,church social events due too having to be at work,to make sure the Airline ran smooth for our customers on there destinations.