"We don't need to have the extremes of inequality that we have. The people at the bottom end should be doing better.”

That was superstar investor Warren Buffett, and statements like that have made him a progressive icon. But Buffett doesn’t exactly walk the walk: he’s threatening to throw nearly 200 workers onto the street just for trying to lift themselves out of poverty.

Buffett, one of the world’s wealthiest people, owns a huge railroad company, but the workers in a major Chicago rail yard his company relies on are barely scraping by on $9 an hour. They’ve come together to form a union, Buffett’s company says that if they’ll all lose their jobs if they try to fight for better pay.

Tell Warren Buffett to stop bullying rail yard workers. Practice what you preach and respect their right to organize.

The rail yard workers are organizing with Warehouse Workers for Justice, the same group that organized workers in Walmart’s warehouses outside Chicago. All these workers are part of the same fight -- warehouses and rail yards once provided good, middle class jobs, but in the era of Walmart, supply chain workers have poverty wages and next to know security while corporations enjoy outsized profits. Like workers in Walmart stores and warehouses, these workers know they’ll only share the wealth if they fight for it, and they’re ready to strike for living wages.

Legally speaking, workers can’t be fired for striking, but Buffett’s company is ready to skirt the law and fire their whole subcontracting firm if they stand up better pay.

We’re never going to get inequality under control if workers can’t organize to make big corporations share the wealth, and Warren Buffett. We need to come together and expose his rank hypocrisy.

Sign our petition to Warren Buffett: respect rail yard workers’ right