BossFeed Briefing for December 18, 2017. Last Thursday, the National Labor Relations Board reversed a previous ruling in order to make it more difficult to hold fast food chains responsible for wages and working conditions at their locations. Yesterday was the sixty-third anniversary of the official proclamation which ended the internment of Japanese Americans who had been removed from their homes. Later this week the U.S. Congress is likely to vote on a tax package which will redistribute wealth to the rich. And this Thursday is the shortest day of the year.
Three things to know this week:
Funnel spiders are found in the largest numbers in the most expensive real estate in Australia, a new study finds. This type of spider is believed to be responsible for all recent known deaths-by-arachnid in the area.
Extremist anti-worker State Representative Matt Manweller lost his position as ranking member of the House Labor Committee because of his own workplace conduct. Manweller, who once inspired the term Manweller-splaining, is currently being investigated for harassment and abuse of power both as a legislator and as a professor at Central Washington University.
The owners of Value Village say they have a free speech right to not disclose how much of their revenue actually goes to charity. They are not yet arguing that the minimum wage violates their right to print whatever numbers they want to print on the paychecks they issue.
Two things to ask:
When did they know it? Clean-up workers at the Hanford nuclear site were internally exposed to plutonium, and radioactive contamination has been found outside a containment area. This originally happened during the summer, but details have only come out now, after workers had previously been told their exposure wasn't serious.
When are they expected to sleep? UPS is scheduling drivers for 70 hours of work over eight days during the holiday rush. The drivers' union argues this punishing schedule takes an extraordinary toll on workers' health and is the result of the company failing to hire and train enough employees.
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
Documents authored by a key strategist for anti-minimum wage efforts were leaked to The Intercept, and they offer some important insight into what the trickle-down crew is thinking about the state of workers' rights. According to the documents, there's an effort underway to raise $4.6 million to head off possible moves by a newly-elected Congress to raise wages in 2019. One of the most intriguing revelations is about the strategic decision to focus on subminimum wages for younger workers, which is so deeply cynical that they couldn't even manage to refer to "victims" of higher wages in their own internal documents without putting it in quotes themselves. But most important, it's clear from these documents that they are scared that we have already won the public debate on wages — and that's a good thing.
Read this far?
Consider yourself briefed, boss.
Let us know what you think about this week's look at the world of work, wages, and inequality!