Dear Mayor and City Council,
My name is Karen Hommema. I joined in with Occupy Raleigh for many reasons, I
will apologize now, this is going to be very long.
I was the youngest of 4 children in my family. After helping my sister pay for
nursing school, my brother to pay for accounting school, and my other brother
to
go to robotics, my parents didn't have enough money for me to got to law school
let alone any kind of College. I was basically told I wasn't good enough for
that and I was only good enough to be a secretary. I was turned down for those
jobs because I wouldn't wear a skirt and high heels and my pants suits were not
good enough. I was pushed to get married, begged to have kids, finally divorced
out of the abuse, and have been working sometimes 2 to 3 jobs at a time to just
survive with very little support from my children's father. I finally found a
full-time day shift position as a Meter Reader for the contractor that reads
meters for the gas company Vectren in Indiana. I finally found a good man to
share my life with.
My fiance, of 3 years now, got an offer from his company to move here to
Raleigh. We were both extremely excited to be able to get away from our
horrible
pasts and move on to a brighter future. I jumped on the internet and
interviewed
with a company that does the meter reading for Duke Energy. Was not promised a
job, but, odds were extremely in my favor of being hired to the first position
available once I was relocated.
Because I worked very hard and got myself overly fatigued and had an accident
while on my way to lunch back in Dec. of 2009 I cannot have that job. I was
told
because of points even though I have no points on my driver's license, I guess
there is something called insurance points. In all 20+ my years working various
jobs that involve driving, I've never heard of insurance points, but they are
now keeping me from having the job that I've loved for the last 3 years.
I have an excellent work ethic, managed to buy a dependable car, pay for
insurance, and buy a home. I still have my home, my car, and insurance even
though i find myself jobless. What happened to everyone else? Unable to collect
unemployment, I joined a temp agency and found myself standing for 12 hours a
day manually peeling off and replacing labels on cosmetic products. The place
was completely racial with one race completely dominating the whole place. I
then took a job with another company, the ad I answered stated in print that
the
pay was $10-$10.50/hr. I received my first check and found I was only receiving
$9.75. When I tried to bring this up to my supervisor my repeated phone calls
went unanswered and were not returned. Instead I received a call from said
supervisor ordering me to report to work. I finally stood my ground about my
pay
and was told that I was lying and never left any messages. Of course I got
upset, I was so upset that I could not portray my thoughts properly. It ended
up
i was terminated from the job 15 minutes later via phone.
I feel all these instances are abuse, others call it "at will employment". I
now
finally got a job, which is 3 steps backwards from where I was before, I will
have to miss making dinner for my family and instead serve it to others. I will
also have to miss this very important meeting with you. None of my reasons will
be addressed unless the right of freedom of speech and freedom to assemble are
protected. The whole being able to occupy 24/7, I believe, should be just as
much our freedom of speech and freedom to assemble as it is the corporations to
use money as their free speech in elections.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Karen Hommema
Voice of the 99%
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