BossFeed Briefing for September 29, 2021. Last Monday, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced it will begin the process of creating new worker safety rules for extreme heat conditions. Last Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced a bill which would reinstate federal pandemic unemployment benefits programs through February 2022. Last Sunday, Nabisco workers ended their weeks-long strike, which means you can finally snack on some Oreos again. Today marks the first full week of Fall. This Sunday is 54 years since the death of folk singer and activist Woody Guthrie.
Three things to know this week:
Dozens of construction workers are getting $2,055,204 in back pay and penalties from a pair of Seattle construction companies as part of a Seattle Office of Labor Standards investigation. The City found a widespread practice of ignoring minimum wage and overtime protections at the two companies.
Governor Inslee has extended the WA eviction moratorium bridge through the end of October. 1 in 4 WA renters indicated it was “very likely” they’d be evicted if the moratorium expired as initially planned at the end of this month.
President Biden’s Department of Justice will continue to fight a WA state law that makes it easier for sick Hanford nuclear workers to access benefits. The federal government first sued to block the law during the Trump Administration.
Two things to ask:
WTF? Insurance companies are rejecting many workers’ compensation claims submitted by frontline workers who contracted COVID-19 on the job. Despite evidence of unsafe working conditions and lack of personal protective gear, insurers say workers cannot prove definitively that the infection occurred at work.
Maybe they're just not feeling valued? Concerned corporate employees at Uber have convened an “all-hands” meeting to demand answers about the company’s $74.9 billion valuation, which recently dipped below rival DoorDash’s $75.2 billion mark. Both companies pay subminimum wages to drivers.
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
This bracing story by Paul Roberts in The Seattle Times profiles some of the 120,000 people in WA who were cut off from unemployment benefits with no action to address the issue at the federal and state levels. After seeing their incomes go to zero over Labor Day weekend, unemployed workers are still scrambling to figure out how to make ends meet — and the economic pain from this benefits cliff is falling unevenly. While all households sent to zero are feeling the impact of the sudden loss of benefits, in some communities there are especially large numbers of people impacted, particularly Black workers, older workers, and gig workers. Meanwhile, Delta continues to surge, and one unemployed worker offered this basic reminder to policymakers who seem content to let hundreds of thousands of people fall even deeper into economic crisis: the pandemic “isn’t over yet.”
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!