Protect Oakland's Essential Service Workers Now!

Oakland City Council

We need urgent action from our City to protect workers & the public!

All of us are depending on frontline, essential service workers, like grocery clerks, delivery drivers, warehouse workers, janitors, and security officers to provide us with what we need to survive during the shelter-in-place. Yet many have insufficient--or no--paid sick days to stay home if they get sick. Already essential service workers have tested positive for and died from coronavirus.

Urge Oakland City Council to pass two policies that protect the health and livelihoods of essential service workers and everyone in our community:

  1. Immediate Paid Sick Days: All employers must provide universal, immediate paid sick leave of at least 10 days during a public health emergency, regardless of approval by a doctor. Include large employers who were cut out of the new federal policy.
  2. Right to Return: Protect workers' livelihoods by ensuring that when it is safe to return to work, they still have a job. Hospitality, restaurant, and airport workers essential to Oakland‘s tourism economy are losing their jobs with no assurances they will be hired back.

Essential service workers – predominantly people of color – are not only on the front lines of the crisis, but among the hardest hit economically.

These policies close loopholes in the new federal paid sick leave and build on effective solutions passed in other cities. Coupled with federal, state and local support for small businesses, these two urgent policies will protect the health and livelihood of essential service workers and keep this short-term crisis from becoming a long-term disaster for thousands of Oakland workers and their families.

Please sign this petition to Oakland City Council to demand immediate action to protect the lives and livelihoods of so many of our neighbors!

Endorsed by: Alameda Labor Council AFL-CIO, Causa Justa::Just Cause, Centro Legal de la Raza, Chinese Progressive Association, Ella Baker Center, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, Gig Workers Rising, IFPTE Local 21, Mujeres Unidas Y Activas, Oakland Rising, Partnership for Working Families, ROC the Bay, SEIU Local 1021, Street Level Health Project, UFCW Local 5, Unite Here Local 2850

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Oakland, CA

To: Oakland City Council
From: [Your Name]

Oakland City Council:

With the shelter-in-place order, all of us are depending on essential service workers. Grocery clerks, delivery drivers, warehouse workers, janitors, and security officers are feeding us and providing us with what we need to survive. Hospitality, restaurant and airport workers essential to Oakland‘s tourism economy are losing their jobs. These workers – who are predominantly people of color – are not only on the front lines of the crisis, but among the hardest hit economically.

Already essential service workers have tested positive for and died from coronavirus, underscoring the urgency to take action to protect workers and stop the spread. We are all dependent on frontline essential service workers. Our City must protect them now!

I am writing to urge Oakland City Council Members to act now to pass two policies that protect the health and livelihood of essential service workers and of everyone in our community:

1. Immediate Paid Sick Days: All employers must provide universal, immediate paid sick leave of at least 10 days during a public health emergency, regardless of approval by a doctor. Include large employers who were cut out of the new federal policy.

2. Right to Return: Protect workers' livelihoods by ensuring that when it is safe to return to work, workers still have a job.

We need leadership and urgent action from our City! These policies close loopholes in the new federal paid sick leave and build on effective solutions passed in other cities. Coupled with federal, state and local support for small businesses, these two urgent policies will protect the health and livelihood of essential service workers and keep this short-term crisis from becoming a long-term disaster for thousands of Oakland workers and their families.

We are all in this together. Let’s protect our workers, stop the spread of coronavirus pandemic, and safeguard the health and well-being of everyone in our community.