BossFeed Briefing for December 1, 2022. The Thursday before last, Nancy Pelosi announced she’ll step down as House Democratic leader. Last Friday was Black Friday, an especially dangerous day for the warehouse and retail workers pushed to the brink as they fulfilled the rush of orders. Last Monday was Cyber Monday, capping off the most branded weekend of the year. Today marks one month until the WA minimum wage increases to $15.74/hour. Next Tuesday is the Senate runoff election in Georgia.
Three things to know this week:
Starbucks announced it will close another location in Seattle over “safety concerns”, just months after closing five other shops. Baristas recently unionized at three of the six Seattle locations closed by the company, including this latest store.
Urged on by President Biden, the U.S House voted to prevent railworkers from going out on strike. Union railworkers are speaking out against the proposed agreement with rail companies because it provides zero days of paid sick leave.
Volkswagen Norway has developed an office chair that can travel 12 miles per hour. The chair comes equipped with heated seats, turn signals, an entertainment system, a horn, and a trailer hitch.
Two things to ask:
Is this a contender for Euphemism of the Year? A news station in Oregon reported that local Fred Meyer workers were getting “short-changed” on their paychecks. Those workers are suing Kroger for wage theft, which is what it’s usually called when a company fails to pay people for all their work.
She had to do *what*? In an article entitled “Why American unemployment needs to rise,” a writer for The Economist bemoans the so-called ‘labor shortage’ and argues that more people out of work would somehow be a good thing. As evidence for this claim, the author cites a Minnesota clothing shop where “the owner has been so short staffed that at one point she had to personally work 18 straight days.”
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
Writing for Workday Magazine, Sarah Lazare outlines how the concept of a “labor shortage” has become a catch-all justification for those pushing a host of anti-worker policies. Lazare notes that Federal Reserve officials have explicitly cited the “labor shortage” as grounds for raising interest rates, a move that will spark a recession and put people out of work. Likewise, some lawmakers and corporate lobbyists have suggested slashing the social safety net as a supposed solution to the “labor shortage,” which they claim was driven by “overly generous” pandemic cash assistance programs that disincentivized people from working. As Lazare writes, the idea of a “labor shortage” is a weapon of rhetorical distraction for the rich and powerful: “so long as we’re talking about how it’s bosses who are supposedly hurting, we’re not talking about what it would take to build an economy that doesn’t perpetually harm the poor.”
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!