BossFeed Briefing for April 4, 2022. The Friday before last was the 111th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City, which killed 146 people, most of them immigrant women. Last Tuesday, President Biden proposed a 20% minimum tax on Americans with more than $100 million in wealth. Last Friday, Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, NY voted to form the first Amazon workers’ union in the country. Today is the 53rd Anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. This Friday marks 87 years since creation of the Works Progress Administration, which put 8.5 million unemployed workers back to work on infrastructure, highways, and arts programs.
Three things to know this week:
Renters in Kenmore won protections requiring landlords to provide 6 months notice of rent increases above 10% and capping move-in and late-rent fees. Both Seattle and unincorporated King County already have similar protections in place.
Some of WA’s wealthiest humans are funding a ballot initiative to overturn the capital gains tax on extraordinary profits. If you don’t pay this tax because you don’t make more than $250,000 in profits from the sale of fancy stocks, click here to “decline to sign” Initiative 1929.
After a three-day strike, Skagit Valley tulip farmworkers reached an agreement with management to address health & safety concerns. The Washington Bulb Company promised to ensure workers have access to gloves, rain gear, boots, goggles, and hydrocortisone cream to treat sores caused by flowers when they’re cut.
Two things to ask:
Know what else feels like a slap in the face? Mega-rich Oscar nominees like Will Smith, Steven Spielberg, and Penelope Cruz each received a gift basket worth $137,000, which included a $50,000 vacation to a Scottish castle, a $25,000 home renovation, and a $12,000 cosmetic surgery. Recipients were also offered the title of “Lord” or “Lady of Glencoe” to accompany a plot of land in Scotland.
Give until it hurts...your rate of return? Billionaire MacKenzie Scott has pledged to give away half her wealth—and she’s donated $12 billion to nonprofits and charities over the past two years. But despite all that philanthropy, Scott is now $19 billion richer today than when she first started donating.
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
The WA Employment Security Department (ESD) claims there’s little they can do to stop demanding people repay thousands of dollars in unemployment benefits—only to somehow find solutions to individual issues as soon as a journalist gets involved. ESD sent Chelsea Rustad a so-called “overpayment notice”, which demanded her family repay $7,900 in benefits they’d already spent to pay bills while unemployed. After months of inaction from ESD, Chelsea took her story to a reporter with Q13 Fox News, and within days of going public, the entire $7,900 balance was suddenly cleared. But nobody should have to rely on individual reporters to shame the state into action: thousands of workers facing these notices are calling on ESD to waive all overpayments as a matter of equity and good conscience.
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!