BossFeed Briefing for February 5, 2018. Last Tuesday, Cleveland's major league baseball team announced they would stop using the racist caricature Chief Wahoo on their uniforms, though they will still be called the Indians. Last Friday, Punxsutawney Phil was forcibly removed from his burrow and then saw his shadow, indicating 6 more weeks of winter. Tomorrow is the 101st anniversary of Congress passing the Immigration Act, which required a literacy test for new arrivals to the US and barred most immigration from Asia. And Thursday the federal government could shut down for the second time this year.
Three things to know this week:
Misleading minimum wage surcharges could soon be a thing of the past. We sent a formal request to the state Department of Labor & Industries asking them to make rules that would bar surcharges that pose as taxes or claim to go towards wages
When Amazon opens a new warehouse, it drives down wages for people doing similar work in the area by an average of 3%, government figures show. Many of these facilities also receive substantial public subsidies.
The US Labor Department is pushing controversial new rules which would allow management to pocket money from tip pools. When an official economic impact analysis found workers would lose billions of dollars of tips if the rules were implemented, senior department officials chose to block the publication of the analysis and go forward with the proposal.
Two things to ask:
Does this look legal to you? A multinational tech company called Pactera is advertising an entry-level data analyst job in Redmond… with an ad that says candidates have to be "born and brought up in the USA." Working Washington members are applying for the job on Indeed with cover letters explaining what they think about this kind of discrimination.
Think that put a frown on the manager’s face? A server in Quebec was reinstated to her job after being fired for “not smiling enough.” She received $30,000 in backpay.
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
In an economic system where most jobs are bad, every extra hour of work can have a negative impact on our lives — and even our health. As Peter Fleming explores in The Guardian, there’s a growing body of research showing that time spent at work has a health impact similar to smoking — and that if you work more than 39 hours a week, it could kill you. While dominant US culture relentlessly celebrates hard work, it turns out that most of us are productive for only about four hours a day, whiling away the rest of our time on the clock by pretending to be busy and worrying about what’s ahead. The science suggests there are two approaches here, both desperately necessary: first, to make work more rewarding & better compensated, and second, for all of us to do less of it.
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!