BossFeed Briefing for June 7, 2021. Last Tuesday marked the 59th anniversary of the unanimous Supreme Court ruling in NLRB v. Washington Aluminum Co., in which the court held that workers have a right to strike even when they’re not in a union. Last Thursday, the state announced it would hold a weekly lottery of $250K to incentivize more WA residents to get vaccinated. Today is the 42nd anniversary of the founding convention of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. This Thursday marks 58 years since President JFK signed the Equal Pay Act into law, but women still make 82 cents for every dollar men are paid. This Sunday marks one week until Jeff Bezos becomes the richest human in outer space.
Three things to know this week:
In a leaked employee wellness pamphlet, Amazon referred to warehouse workers as “industrial athletes”. The pamphlet encourages workers to practice self-care by monitoring urine color and buying oversize shoes for swollen feet, though it doesn’t mention anything about the extra high workers’ comp rate Amazon is forced to pay because of its especially high rate of warehouse injuries.
Opening arguments began Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by Washington state against GEO Group for violating minimum wage laws at its for-profit immigration detention center in Tacoma. The company pays just $1/day to people working while detained at the facility.
A Spokane social studies teacher brought raw cotton to class and led students in an activity to see who could clean the cotton the fastest. The incident happened as part of a lesson on “industrial economics”.
Two things to ask:
Anyone else save their receipts? Instacart is expanding with a new Priority Delivery service, which promises rapid 30-minute grocery delivery in Seattle and several other major cities. Last year, the company said that if the City Council approved hazard pay for grocery delivery workers, it "could eliminate" their ability to do business in the city.
Think he likes his job? DoorDash CEO Tony Xu banked $400 million last year, one of the very highest CEO pay packages on record. A DoorDash driver would have to complete about 200 million deliveries at the $2/job minimum to gross that much money.
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
Kim Kardashian West is gaining yet another type of notoriety: she’s the subject of a wage theft lawsuit brought by house cleaners in her California mansion, who say they weren’t paid for all the hours they worked, didn’t get overtime pay, weren’t given required meal and rest breaks, and didn’t get any pay stubs. But instead of taking responsibility and paying workers what they’re owed, Kardashian West maintains she can’t be held liable for the wage theft because the workers were technically employed by a third-party vendor (despite the fact that they literally worked in her home). As workers’ rights lawyer Terri Gerstein explains in an op-ed for NBC News, individual employers and third-party companies have gotten increasingly adept at muddying the waters when it comes to employer-employee relationships and sidestepping legal responsibility for violations of workers’ rights. Gerstein calls for new “joint employment” laws that respond to the reality faced by many contracted workers these days: they work for both the individual and the contracting company, and they should be able to hold both parties accountable.
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!