BossFeed Briefing for October 4, 2022. The Monday before last, Jupiter came the closest to Earth it's been in 59 years. Last Tuesday, a Seattle City Council committee discussed deactivation protections for gig workers. Also last Tuesday, Seattle Mayor Harrell released his proposed budget for 2023. This Saturday, the Raise the Wage Tukwila campaign will be hitting the doors to reach voters – sign up for a shift here. This Monday is Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Three things to know this week:
In 2023, the Seattle minimum wage for most workers will rise to $18.69/hour, and the WA minimum wage will rise to $15.74/hour. Both automatic adjustments account for 8-10% inflation over the past year.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has proposed a 4% cap on cost-of-living wage adjustments for city-funded workers who provide front-line services to people who are homeless. Previously, then-City Councilmember Harrell voted with the entire Seattle City Council to make sure those workers’ wages keep up with inflation.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing a Red Robin restaurant in Everett after workers filed complaints about sexual harassment. Industry-wide, 71% of women restaurant workers report facing sexual harassment on the job.
Two things to ask:
Shall we do the math? President Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20K in student loan debt per borrower will cost the federal government $400 billion over 10 years. That comes out to...half of one year of U.S. military spending, which is set to exceed $800 billion in 2023.
Who’s the one with the problem? Convenience food delivery company Gopuff has hired former Amazon executives to push aggressive productivity quotas for warehouse workers. Upon learning that workers sometimes take bathroom breaks, one new Gopuff executive asked how managers could anticipate “that problem”.
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
With both the state of WA and the City of Seattle announcing automatic inflation adjustments to the minimum wage, we may hear from the usual chorus of business lobbyists, apologists for inequality, and self-appointed experts who insist that Utter Economic Doom is somehow nigh. So we took a trip down memory lane to see how their Chicken Little predictions have turned out in recent years. Here’s a representative example: in April 2014, as Seattle City Council debated the $15 minimum wage, the Washington Restaurant Association warned that 69% of full-service restaurants and 49% of quick-serve restaurants would lay off employees as a result of higher wages; in reality, the restaurant business in Seattle boomed. As it turns out, employer speculations about the minimum wage are more akin to dystopian science fiction than to a high-quality economic forecast—and the sky remains firmly aloft.
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!