BossFeed Briefing for February 8, 2022. Last Tuesday, more than 2,600 people signed in PRO to support the Billionaire Wealth Tax (SB 5426) during a hearing before the WA House Finance Committee. Last Wednesday was Groundhog Day, on which a rodent who lives in Pennsylvania foretold six more weeks of winter. Sunday was the 103rd anniversary of the start of the Seattle General Strike, during which 65,000 workers walked off the job. Today, the Seattle City Council holds a hearing on our first-in-nation PayUp policy to end subminimum wages for 40K+ workers on apps like DoorDash, Instacart, and TaskRabbit. This Saturday is the birthdate of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who was enslaved at birth in 1817.
Three things to know this week:
330 workers at several Menchie’s frozen yogurt stores in WA are getting $97,000 in back pay after a federal wage theft investigation. The U.S. Department of Labor found violations at nine WA Menchie’s franchises operated by BroYo LLC, including locations in Bellevue, Bonney Lake, Federal Way, Lynnwood, Puyallup, Renton, Tacoma, and Vancouver.
Starbucks workers are unionizing at more than 50 stores across 19 states, less than two months after workers in Buffalo, NY formed the first Starbucks union in the U.S. So far, workers at three Seattle locations have announced plans to hold union elections.
Super-yacht sales rose 77% in 2021, driven by a $1 trillion increase in wealth for the world’s 500 richest people. Said one purveyor of giant fancy boats: “It’s a great time to be a yacht owner.”
Two things to ask:
What do you get when you cross Tinder with subminimum wages? As part of a Valentine’s Day promotion, DoorDash and Shake Shack are launching a dating website for “single chicken sandwich lovers.” Drivers on DoorDash make as little as $2/job, whether or not they’re delivering free chicken to app-crossed lovers.
But he’s not the one who’d have to move? Tenants are calling on the WA state legislature to pass a bill to require landlords to provide 6 months advance notice for rent increases above 7.5% (HB 1905). One South King County landlord claims that the existing 60-day notice period is “plenty of time…to find new housing”, also noting that he’s raised rent by up to 10% this year at his nine apartment buildings.
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
Long COVID prevents at least 1.6 million people from working full-time as they battle long-term symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, memory loss, and heart abnormalities, according to new research from the Brookings Institution. Many business owners have blamed the existence of unemployment benefits as the root cause for the so-called “labor shortage”—but these new findings paint a different picture, showing how even “mild” COVID infection can lead to lasting symptoms that force many workers to remain outside the workforce, often without the economic security they need to make ends meet. Economists estimate that about 2.2 million fewer people are working today than before the pandemic took hold, of which 1.6 million are suffering from debilitating long COVID symptoms, which accounts for 72% of “missing” workers. Perhaps the true labor shortage is a result of the mass disabilities workers have acquired throughout the pandemic.
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!