BossFeed Briefing for January 10, 2022. The Saturday before last, the WA minimum wage rose to $14.49/hour. Last Tuesday, the federal jobs report showed 4.5 million people quit their jobs in November, and 6.7 million were hired into new jobs. Today is the first day of the 2022 WA legislative session (here’s What Workers Want this year). This Saturday, the Seattle eviction moratorium is set to expire. Next Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
Three things to know this week:
Agricultural workers in WA will now get overtime pay when they work overtime hours. During the 2021 WA legislative session, workers won a law ending the longstanding racist exclusion of agricultural workers from overtime protections.
Red Lobster doesn’t provide paid sick leave to workers where state law doesn't require it. In a survey, 63% of Red Lobster workers said that they’ve reported to work when sick because they needed the income.
Walmart and Kroger raised prices for at-home rapid COVID tests immediately after the Biden administration allowed a price agreement to expire. Prices for the tests were previously capped at an already-expensive $14—but retailers are now selling them for as much as $24.
Two things to ask:
Wonder why? Amazon tried to prevent WA state investigators from entering its DuPont warehouse, and took additional steps to “undermine data collection” relevant to the state’s workplace safety investigation. Workers at the DuPont location are injured more frequently than at any other large Amazon warehouse in the country.
WTAF? During a traffic stop, police in San Ramon, California released an attack dog on Ali Badr, an Uber driver and Egyptian immigrant who was hospitalized after being mauled by the animal. Badr was pulled over for missing a rental payment on his car.
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
Last week, Walmart slashed paid sick leave for COVID-positive workers—and on the very same day, the company told corporate staff to continue working from home, according to a report by Siddharth Cavale and Richa Naidu in Reuters. Nearly two years into the pandemic, this two-tiered approach to worker health and safety is hardly new, but it does (once again) raise the question: What would it look like if elected leaders, public health officials, and business executives prioritized the health and safety of low-wage frontline workers as much as that of higher-paid office professionals? Chicago public school teachers are demanding answers to that question—and standing up for policies that protect their health and safety—as they enter the fourth day of a labor dispute over rising COVID cases in schools; and public health officials in Los Angeles are answering that question with a new policy requiring employers to provide workers with high-quality N95 and KN95 masks, free of charge. Meanwhile, here in Washington, tech company engineers are working from home, the state legislature has decided to meet mostly remotely while several legislators test positive, and restaurants & retailers have zero capacity restrictions.
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!