Dear Friend,

A staggering 98% of our 300,000 hospitality and food service members were laid off in the past two months, a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. They are cooks, servers, bartenders, housekeepers, and stadium and airport food service workers; they are women, immigrants and people of color. Existing racial and economic disparities have left many of these workers experiencing higher outcomes of COVID-19-related infections and deaths. Many are finding it difficult to feed their families, which is why we need your help.

Please donate today to help hospitality and food service workers support their families.

They are workers like lifelong New Orleans resident and Hurricane Katrina survivor Dora Whitfield. A casino buffet server, Dora was proud to welcome guests for almost two decades before being laid off in mid-March. She is the sole economic provider for her family, and her steady tip earnings allowed her to become a first-time homeowner in 2014. In Louisiana, unemployment benefits are capped at $234 a week, so even with the additional federal benefit, her weekly income now falls dramatically short. Despite government claims that no one should lose shelter or utilities during the crisis, Dora’s community has experienced just the opposite. Some of her co-workers found eviction notices posted to their doors on April 1st and Dora has already had some services shut off.

Please donate to the UNITE HERE Education and Support Fund for hospitality and food service workers displaced by COVID-19.

Despite being knocked off their feet, hospitality and food service workers like Dora have been in the fight, rising to demand relief and safety. UNITE HERE members are taking to the streets in car caravan protests: In Miami and Orlando, hundreds of members demanded that Florida fix the broken unemployment system; in Las Vegas, 10,000 members demanded that they not be used as guinea pigs in a reopening experiment. And on June 3rd, hospitality workers and community members from across the Northeast will join a car caravan to D.C. to demand that, as the country reopens, the economic and safety concerns of working families should be paramount to any recovery package.

As they stand up for all working families, laid-off hospitality workers need your support. Will you stand in solidarity with them today with a donation to the UNITE HERE Education and Support Fund?

Thank you,

Nia Winston, General Vice President, UNITE HERE; President UNITE HERE Local 24 Detroit

Enrique Fernandez, General Vice President for Immigration, Diversity and Civil Rights, UNITE HERE