United for Respect

New Campaign Campaigns

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  ALL Retail stores should close on Thanksgiving Day

  This year, some retailers are opening as early as 6am on Thanksgiving Day. Every year these companies take more and more family time away from hardworking employees. This is yet another example of retail companies completely disregarding our lives. We are being pushed to work harder, longer hours for the same measly paychecks that don’t support our families, while retail executives and CEOs sit at home with their families and collect millions from our work. Thanksgiving is a day everyone should get to spend with our families. We are calling on all retail stores to close on Thanksgiving, as a fully paid holiday, so retail workers across the country can spend time with our families.

  3,437 of 4,000 Signatures

  Created by Trish Rose
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  Howard Schultz, Meet With Your Baristas!

  Our schedules constantly change, many of us struggle to get enough work hours, we can't plan our lives around our jobs, and we find it difficult if not impossible to call out sick because of the difficulty of finding coverage. These things contribute to a stressful work environment and decrease morale at our stores. We've seen great, hardworking coworkers leave the company for these reasons. We, the baristas of Starbucks, experience these things firsthand, and we are the very people within the company who should be proposing solutions. We want to talk to Howard Schultz in person, and have a conversation about how we can move forward together to make Starbucks better. Please sign on in support!

  188 of 200 Signatures

  Created by Leila, Darrion, Grant, and Melanie
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  Starbucks: Give us a fair workweek!

  We’re Starbucks employees and we love our customers. Every single day, dedicated customers like Georgia, Chris, Jim, Herb, Colleen, Anna, Rob, Sandy, Charlie, Tim, Mike, Mark, Ashley, Lee, Andie and countless others come into our stores, order their drinks, and share a little bit of their day with us. Our customers are loyal, consistent, and predictable (about their drink orders, at least!) and we love serving them. But we need Starbucks to treat us like we treat our customers. We, employees of Starbucks, demand Starbucks give us one-month advance notice of our schedules, stable hours, and access to full-time work. We regularly have schedules that fluctuate from 15 hours to 40 hours to no hours. We often get our schedules less than a week in advance — that’s not nearly enough to plan for childcare, another job, or school… or enough to cover our bills. And few baristas actually get those health benefits Starbucks brags about because it costs too much or they don’t work enough hours to qualify. Jannette Navarro, a Starbucks barista and young mom, just told her story in the New York Times of the constant chaos of an erratic Starbucks schedule: “You’re waiting on your job to control your life,” she said, with the scheduling software used by her employer dictating everything from “how much sleep Gavin [her son] will get to what groceries I’ll be able to buy this month.” All across the country, Starbucks baristas like us sold copies of the New York Times paper that exposed what it's like to be one of the 130,000 workers making the lattes that keep America going every day. We are a few of those baristas and, like Jannette, we also struggle with the nightmarish "magic" of Starbucks' computerized schedules. After the article came out, Starbucks responded with an announcement that they will now post schedules one week in advance and stop giving baristas closing and opening shifts — we call them "clopens" — back to back. Basically just adhering to policies they already have – and this isn't enough. We are coming together with our dedicated customers — like you — and asking Starbucks for one-month advance notice of our schedules, stable hours, and access to full-time work. There's no reason why our work schedules can't be as consistent as our loyal customers who line up for their morning “Venti soy latte”. Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/people/ivypics/

  8,047 of 9,000 Signatures

  Created by Zee, Connor, Liberte, and Sarah
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  Starbucks: End clopens now!

  My life is hectic but I manage to make it all work. I go to school at night and -- until July -- worked two part time jobs to make ends meet. One of my jobs was working as a barista for more than 2 years at a Starbucks in New Haven, CT. At Starbucks, I often worked back to back closing and then opening shifts - with 7 or 8 hours between shifts. Among Starbucks baristas this is known as a "clopening." Last year, my store didn’t have a manager so I was clopening more than 6 times a month! Lately, because of my second job, I clopened 1-2 times a month. And because of high turnover in the store, my boss started scheduling me wherever they needed me instead of taking into account my second job and school schedules. In July, I was called in to work at the last minute, even though I was needed at my other job. My manager wrote me up because I was unable to get a replacement for a time I wasn't even scheduled for. This isn’t right - my time counts. And when the store was understaffed on closing shifts, I was forced to stay even later than my scheduled shift in order to make sure the store was ready to open for the morning rush. Because I was frequently scheduled for clopening shifts, I got just 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night. I was doing all I could to get ahead, but Starbucks’ scheduling practices made me question whether that was possible and I parted ways with Starbucks. Even though I no longer work there, I know I am not the only partner struggling with these issues. I want to help all my former coworkers by asking the company to give workers 11 hours of rest between shifts in all U.S. stores, across the board so we aren’t at the mercy of individual managers Many of us have different experiences at Starbucks, depending on our manager. Please join me in asking Starbucks for consistent protections across the company, starting with healthy schedules across the board.

  10,749 of 15,000 Signatures

  Created by Ciara Moran
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  Tell Walmart CEO Doug McMillon: Take Action Now to Prevent More Deaths

  Walmart is the country’s largest corporate employer, and I’m alarmed at how little they’re doing to stop the spread of the virus. Walmart also laid the groundwork for this crisis through years of negligence, leaving hundreds of thousands of employees without adequate paid sick leave or health insurance. That means if someone wakes up sick, they have to make the impossible decision between working sick or losing their pay. What Walmart decides to do doesn’t just affect folks who work there -- it affects customers, suppliers, contractors, and families when their loved ones die due to corporate negligence.

  70 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Angela McMiller
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  Protect retail & grocery store workers during coronavirus pandemic

  Lots of grateful customers thank us for supporting them. But America’s biggest employers aren’t treating us like heroes, they are treating us like we are their bottomline. Walmart employs many people who are facing the pandemic without paid time off or health insurance. They penalize us when we’re sick and don’t accept doctors’ notes as excused absences. Amazon is hiring hundreds of thousands of employees to meet increasing demand – but most of these jobs are part-time without health care. Even worse, the government’s response so far has specifically excluded most retail and grocery employees – any company with more than 500 employees isn’t required to provide the emergency federal paid sick leave. Working in retail and grocery stores is a lot more dangerous than it was last month. Corporations need to recognize the worth of our work. Thank you for supporting us.

  55 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Brittney Legowski
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  H&M workers deserve good schedules and free speech in the workplace without retaliation

  In August 2019, H&M management terminated sales associate Nick Gallant after he began exposing safety violations in the workplace and started educating his co-workers on their rights under the new fair work week laws in San Francisco and Emeryville, California. That’s why we need you to sign this petition and call on H&M to Bring Nick Back, to stop retaliating against workers, and to give all California H&M associates a Fair Workweek. **United for Respect (UFR) is a national non-profit organization. UFR is a multiracial movement of working people throughout the U.S. advancing a vision of an economy where our work is respected and our humanity recognized. UFR is not a labor union and does not intend or seek to represent retail employees over terms and conditions of employment, or to bargain with retail employers.

  213 of 300 Signatures

  Created by Nickolas Gallant
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  Walmart associates deserve to feel safe coming to work

  The mass shooting in El Paso, Texas was an act of white supremacy and domestic terrorism. Walmart associates returned to work afraid, angry, devastated, and confused. We don’t feel safe in our stores. We support gun control and universal background checks to get weapons of war out of the hands of white supremacists, but let’s be clear that mass shootings are the symptom of a society built on xenophobia, toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and white supremacy. We’re calling for: 1) Walmart to reject the racism & bigotry that’s the root cause of these hate crimes 2) Walmart to change their policy to disallow open carry in all stores and provide clear signs at all entryways of this change 3) Walmart to stop the sale of guns in all stores We can’t wait any longer. We deserve to feel safe and free of violence in our stores. If you are experiencing emotional distress related to incidents of mass violence, call 1-800-985-5990 or text TalkWithUs to 66746 to connect with a trained crisis counselor. By signing up, you are agreeing to receive updates from United for Respect. You can unsubscribe or update your preferences at any time. Message and data rates may apply. Text HELP for more information. Text STOP to stop receiving messages.

  3,679 of 4,000 Signatures

  Created by Gabby Enriquez
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  Lowe’s employees deserve severance

  My name is Patricia Wilkerson and I worked at Lowe’s in Dayton, TX for over 15 years. I’m left without a job and without severance pay It has been very difficult not being given a permanent job and having been laid off twice from Lowe’s. I have had to work for cash as a design assistant and personal driver off and on to scrape by and even my grown children have had to help me . As a result, I'm behind on my mortgage and could lose my home. Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison has shut down stores across the country and fired thousands of employees in order to increase profits for top executives. This isn’t right. Ellison needs to take responsibility for destroying our jobs and offer support for struggling families like mine who have been serving this company for years. This is the same corporate greed that is hurting hundreds of thousands of working people and our families at other retailers – and it needs to end. We call on Lowe’s to pay severance to store employees whose jobs he destroyed. For every year worked, we call for a week’s worth of pay. We further call on him to take steps to protect the jobs that remain at Lowe’s, so that our former coworkers have more assurance that their lives won't be thrown into chaos, as mine has been. Thanks for standing with us. By signing up, you are agreeing to receive updates from United for Respect. You can unsubscribe or update your preferences at any time. Message and data rates may apply. Text HELP for more information. Text STOP to stop receiving messages.

  4,750 of 5,000 Signatures

  Created by Patricia Wilkerson
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  San Francisco Federal Reserve: Pick a President Who Represents Workers, Not Corporations and Banks

  One of the most important economic policymaking positions in the country, the president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, is vacant. 10 years after the financial crash, we can’t afford to make the same mistakes of the past. We need an independent San Francisco Fed president who will fight for working people of color. Instead of filling this position with another Fed insider, we need someone who actually understands and represents workers and people of color in the largest Fed bank region in the country.

  7,825 of 8,000 Signatures

  Created by Nick Gallant