Dear Board Members,

We, the undersigned employees at CGCC, present you with this petition because we need salaries on which we can live.  We’ve been negotiating for close six months but management’s bargaining team has shown very little desire to move toward an agreement on this issue.

Currently at least half of all classified employees are below what has been calculated as a living wage for a single person in Hood River County.  The Northwest Federation of Community Organizations has determined a single person would need to make $12.37 per hour (based on a 2,080 hour work year) in order to meet their basic expenses.  Currently no employee is even close to making a wage that a single parent would need to meet the basic expenses for their family.  Unfortunately, the salary gap between the lowest paid CGCC employee and the highest paid employee has nearly doubled since 2003, from just over $60,000 to just under $120,000.

We ask that you instruct the management bargaining team to provide us a wage proposal that at the very least we can live on.

Sincerely,