BossFeed Briefing for October 25, 2021. The Saturday before last, Seattle’s KOMO News suffered a ransomware attack which prevented their morning broadcast. Last Monday, the City of Seattle announced that the minimum wage in 2022 will rise to $17.27/hour for most workers. Last Wednesday, Netflix employees walked off the job to demand the company take measures to better support trans workers. Today marks six days until the WA state eviction moratorium bridge is set to expire. This Sunday is Halloween, the only day of the year where it’s permissible for roving bands of children to trespass and extort payment from their neighbors.
Three things to know this week:
1 in 5 gig drivers collected unemployment benefits during the height of the pandemic in July 2020. Gig workers received benefits under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which lawmakers let expire over Labor Day weekend.
The NFL agreed to stop using a race-based method to evaluate which players get benefits under the league’s concussion settlement. Lawyers for former Black players say the league approved dementia benefits claims for white players at three times the rate it did for Black players.
Tech startup Worldcoin is giving out free cryptocurrency in exchange for a retina scan by a small chrome sphere called the Orb. Meanwhile, tech startup Moves wants to let drivers on apps like DoorDash, Lyft, and Uber get shares in those companies, so that drivers can “feel like they have an economic stake in the success of the companies."
Two things to ask:
So...who wants to tell him? Matt McIlwain, one of the wealthiest venture capitalists in WA, said that capitalism “helped end racism” (citing a Sears catalog and the existence of Uber as proof of his claim). When not talking about how racism ended, McIlwain leads the fight against taxes on the wealthiest people and corporations in WA.
Shall we do the math? The Seattle Times Editorial Board is calling for an end to the state and City of Seattle eviction moratoriums, arguing that “broad renter aid” is now available. They point to $49 million in funds available to the 60,000 Seattle renters behind on rent — a pool of money that works out to just $816 per household.
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
Amazon workers attempting to take leave from the company face a dysfunctional internal maze that often results in workers being underpaid, left without benefits at all, or even fired, according to new reporting from The New York Times. Internal company documents show that workers taking both paid and unpaid leaves — including parental leave, medical leave, and other legally protected types of leave — have been systematically underpaid for at least the past year and a half, have struggled to reach case managers, and have had benefits they are eligible for denied, issues which Amazon attributes to the fact that it has historically “optimized for the customer experience”. Problems with Amazon’s leave program extend even further in some cases: workers report that automated attendance software will mistakenly mark warehouse workers taking leave as no-shows for shifts, automatically leading to them getting fired. Amazon employs more than 1.3 million people worldwide and pledges to be “Earth’s best employer”.
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!