BossFeed Briefing for April 12, 2021. BossFeed Briefing for April 12, 2021. Last Tuesday, Forbes reported that its list of American billionaires grew by one third over the past year, with nearly 500 new billionaires minted during the pandemic. Last Friday, Amazon issued an official statement after the Bessemer union vote that it was "not true" that they "intimidated employees." Last Saturday, the BBC saw TV ratings plummet after pulling regularly scheduled programming in favor of wall-to-wall coverage of the death of 99-year-old Prince Phillip. This Thursday marks the birthday of Black labor organizer and civil rights leader A. Phillip Randolph, who was born in 1889. This Friday is the 105th anniversary of a strike in New York led by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, during which 60,000 workers demanded union recognition.
Three things to know this week:
Gig company DoorDash is holding a Hunger Games-style lottery where ten workers can win $50,000 cash, as long as they qualify for the competition by completing 25 deliveries on the app. Meanwhile, Seattle gig workers are asking the City Council & the public to support their campaign for new laws that raise pay, protect flexibility, and provide transparency.
Janitorial services company National Maintenance Contractors dictated the terms of contracts that left hundreds of janitors earning less than minimum wage, paying exorbitant fees, and facing impossible productivity goals, according to a lawsuit filed by the WA Attorney General’s office. One janitor cleaned a 1,700-square-foot office six days a week and earned just $6.59 per cleaning.
A top executive at Denny’s told investors during a private meeting that California’s law increasing the minimum wage to $15/hr ended up being good for the company’s business. Industry lobby groups like the National Restaurant Association have publicly opposed an increased federal minimum wage, and fought hard to preserve the $2.13/hour federal subminimum wage for tipped workers.
Two things to ask:
Can we all agree to just call it “wage theft”? Multibillion dollar publishing company McGraw Hill is charging freelance editorial workers a fee to collect their paychecks. After freelancers called out this indefensible practice, the company issued a statement defending the “administrative fee” and claiming it’s just their way of “offsetting” the cost of paying people for their work.
Think it’s a good gig? Former aides who worked under Labor Secretary Marty Walsh when he was Mayor of Boston are now taking jobs as corporate lobbyists. One of Walsh’s former top labor advisors was just hired as a federal lobbyist for Uber, where he’ll be responsible for lobbying his old boss over issues related to gig workers’ rights.
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
To truly dismantle systemic violence against Asian massage parlor workers, we must listen directly to workers talking about their experiences in the industry and follow the solutions they offer, writes Zhou Shuxuan of the Massage Parlor Outreach Project in a recent piece for Sixth Sense. Shuxuan interviews several massage parlor workers in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District, discussing the various ways that people start working in the industry, the challenges workers face on the job and in their communities, and their thoughts about law enforcement’s role in protecting their safety. Many workers voiced distrust of the police, pointing to a series of 2019 Seattle police raids in the CID, which police officials say were intended to “rescue” massage workers from supposed trafficking and exploitation—but which actually caused many workers to lose jobs and housing, making life more dangerous and more precarious. One worker, Lily, offered her thoughts on what increased policing really means for workers’ livelihoods: “White supremacy and national policy are colluding to oppress laborers of color struggling to survive.”
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!