Man starts petition to provide aid for essential workers

Petition calls for them to receive extra $600 a week as well

A local employee who’s continuing in his job believes he and all the essential workers who are still in their jobs should receive additional help as well.

Najaka Carter, who works locally as a forklift and machine operator, has started a petition calling for essential workers to receive additional support. “Essential Workers should be getting $600 hazardous pay” Carter states on his petition he’s started.

Carter is asking those who are still employed as essential workers receive the same additional help those who have been laid off in California are eligible to receive. The state is using funding from the CARES Act to provide those who have been laid off due to the coronavirus with an additional $600 a week in benefits above what they would normally receive. Carter believes the same should be done for essential workers. “We’re not getting hazardous pay,” he said. “We’re risking our health and families health.”

On his petition, Carter states: “Take initiative to compensate the ones still working and at risk with the same extra $600 that the unemployed are receiving.”

He added on the petition it’s necessary “because just as those who have been out of work are at risk and need help, so are the people who still have to go to work every day.”

On the petition Carter states he “wanted to ask if you could add your name too. This campaign means a lot to me and the more support we can get behind it, the better chance we have of succeeding.”

Carter said the number of signatures he has received on the petition has far exceeded anything he expected. “Honestly why first started I was just hoping for a few hundred,” he said. “It just kept going.”

As of Monday morning, Carter’s petition had received about 15,000 signatures. “I am among those who are working in a grocery store and risking mine and my family’s health!” wrote one person who signed the petition.

“Because we healthcare workers deserve it,” wrote another person who signed the petition.

“Because our jobs put us out there taking chances make sure everyone has medical, food, groceries, etc.,” wrote another person who signed the petition.

Carter stressed his petition wasn’t aimed at employers but that he believes essential workers should be receiving the same benefits as those who were laid off.

“I feel like it should have been for all of us,” he said. “How come we don’t qualify for the extra $600 too?”

He said some employers have been able to provide their employees with raises and bonus but not all employers have been able to do that.

He added the extra $600 should go to grocery store workers, field workers, health care workers, truckers, construction workers or as he puts it “it’s every

body.” As far as what he plans to do with the petition, Carter said his main goal of the petition is just to get the word out. “Just to get our voices heard,” he said.

Those who would like to sign the petition can go here: https://sign. moveon.org/petitions/ essential-workers-getting-600-hazardouspay?share