BossFeed Briefing for April 17, 2017. With one week remaining in this year’s regular session of the Washington State Legislature, a bill to protect the rights of pregnant workers has passed into law, paid family leave remains unresolved, and one or more special sessions are likely. Hundreds of thousands of people joined Tax Day marches across the country this past weekend, and there was a major Black Lives Matter demonstration in Seattle as well. May Day is two weeks from today.
Three things to know this week:
More than 750 immigrants joined a hunger strike at the privately-owned Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. Striking detainees are demanding better conditions at the largest immigrant detention facility on the west coast, including an increase to the $1/day they are currently paid for their work there.
He may be forced to withdraw his Twitter account too. Former fast food CEO and defeated Cabinet nominee Andy Puzder launched a twitter fight last week after his latest anti-minimum wage screed was criticized by Lydia DePillis, a leading journalist on economic & labor issues. He lost the argument.
Steve Easterbrook of McDonald’s was paid more than $15 million for his first full year of work as CEO, during which same-store sales continued to fall. He made $7.9 million in his prior partial year of work.
Two things to ask:
How come there’s never a line item for the electric bill? Paying your workers is a cost of doing business, not an extra to be counted separately. That's why we've started tracking those outlets which are adding so-called “minimum wage surcharges” to their bills.
What if obstetricians just handed out lottery tickets? Only 13% of US workers have access to paid family leave, so some parents are turning to crowd-funding websites to help afford time with their new children.
And one thing that’s worth a closer look:
App-based companies like Uber & Lyft urge customers to rate service on 5-star systems and often de-activate workers whose rating falls below about 4.6, but there’s no standard definition of what each star level is supposed to indicate. Caroline O'Donovan of BuzzFeed explores how these kinds of 5-star systems are confusing, subjective, and prone to bias — and how workers and customers navigate the issues.
Read this far?
Consider yourself briefed, boss.
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