BossFeed Briefing for February 20, 2017. Today is a holiday for lots of people who don’t work in front-line customer service jobs, healthcare, or emergency services. It’s the one month anniversary of Inauguration Day. And it’s been five days since bills to roll back the minimum wage advanced out of a State Senate committee.
Three things to know this week:
Hundreds gathered for a solidarity pray-in at Amazon’s South Lake Union headquarters on Friday. The company uses an entire floor for a doggie daycare, but security officers have not been accomodated with a place to pray on their breaks.
Alexander Acosta is the new nominee to be Secretary of Labor. Unlike rejected nominee Andy Puzder, Acosta has never been CEO of a fast food chain with rampant wage theft violations — but he has been division leader at the George W. Bush Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division.
None of Washington’s four Republican congressional representatives has scheduled a single town hall meeting during the Congressional recess. So we’re bringing it to them, with rallies outside their offices on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
Two things to ask:
What if that's actually the best argument they have against paid family leave? In one of the most Chicken Little predictions we've seen in a long time, business lobby groups apparently told a journalist that the projected $2/week payroll cost of funding a paid family leave program was so high it would force businesses to "close up shop." Two dollars a week.
What does that say about the private sector? After Port of Seattle CEO Ted Fick was forced out over ethics violations including a 5-figure bonus he paid to himself, he explained he had learned that "his talents and strengths were better suited to the private sector."
And one thing that’s worth a closer look:
Fascinating research (including video of monkeys throwing things) suggests that animals are extremely sensitive to inequality. For example, a macaque monkey will accept payment in cucumbers to do a small trick, even though cucumbers aren’t that great. But if that monkey sees another money getting a grape for the same trick, they will lash out at the unfair treatment.
Read this far?
Consider yourself briefed, boss.