Protect Essential Service Workers Now! Petition: Protect Essential Service Workers Now! With the shelter-in-place order, all of us are depending on frontline, essential service workers. Grocery clerks, delivery drivers, warehouse workers, janitors, and security officers who work at essential businesses 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! Urge Oakland City Council to take action now to pass two policies that protect the health and livelihood of frontline, essential service workers and of everyone in our community: 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. Right to Return: Protect workers' livelihoods by ensuring that when it is safe to return to work, essential service 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.

Cities & states need to expand local emergency paid sick days for the millions of essential workers risking their lives at work immediately for #healthequity during this pandemic. Oakland folks sign here #ProtectOaklandWorkers

bitly.com/PaidSickDaysOak