BossFeed Briefing for April 12, 2022. Last Tuesday, Carmen Figueroa shared what a day in her life is like as a driver on Grubhub & DoorDash in this radio diary for KUOW. Last Thursday, the US Senate confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Today, the Seattle City Council holds a hearing on our just-introduced PayUp policy to raise pay, protect flexibility, and provide transparency for 40K+ gig workers. This Friday is the first night of Passover. This Sunday marks 2 weeks until May Day.
Three things to know this week:
Our PayUp ordinance to raise pay, protect flexibility, and provide transparency for 40,000+ gig workers in Seattle was officially introduced at Seattle City Council. Gig workers spoke to various local media outlets about why they need to see an end to subminimum wages, including Q13 Fox, KOMO 4, and MyNorthwest—you can help by sending a message to City leaders urging them to pass PayUp.
Governor Inslee signed into law a requirement that employers in WA include salary and benefits information in all job listings. The legislation lets every worker know if they’re being underpaid, which is especially important to women and people of color, who are often paid less than white and male workers doing the same work.
Hundreds of undocumented people detained at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma have been denied in-person visits for more than two years, and the isolation is taking a toll on their mental health. Federal and state prisons mostly resumed in-person visitations last year.
Two things to ask:
Who knew he was such a gifted mental gymnast? At a recent employee town hall meeting, Howard Schultz—who just returned as Starbucks CEO—complained that the company was being “assaulted” by worker unionization campaigns, adding that unions are “trying to take our people.” Schultz later insisted he’s not anti-union, saying he’s simply “pro-Starbucks” and “pro-Starbucks culture.”
What do they plan to do with all that data? Tech startup Worldcoin promised to provide people with cryptocurrency in exchange for having their retinas scanned by a spherical device called the Orb. But while the company has collected biometric data on half a million people worldwide, it hasn’t delivered cryptocurrency payments to anyone.
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
This piece by Luis Feliz Leon in The American Prospect profiles workers of color at an Amazon distribution warehouse in Staten Island, New York, who successfully organized the first Amazon Labor Union in the country. Angelika Maldonado and Cassio Mendoza were both volunteer union organizers who worked the night shift, but they took turns coming into the warehouse on their days off, sometimes staying for 10+ hours to reach as many people as possible. Organizers also got strategic about how and when to try to talk about the union with co-workers: rather than trying to catch people exhausted at the end of their shift or at the bus stop, they brought home cooked food to share in the cafeteria, using that to jumpstart casual conversations where they’d identify more potential worker-organizers. The strategic, one-on-one approach paid off with a historic vote in favor of forming a union—an outcome Mendoza says demonstrates “how much power a small group of dedicated workers really [has]”.
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!