BossFeed Briefing for June 13, 2022. The Friday before last, Starbucks announced it will close a newly-unionized store in Ithaca, NY, but claimed the decision is unrelated to the union campaign. Last Tuesday marked one week since Seattle gig workers won the landmark PayUp policy to end subminimum wages for workers on apps like DoorDash, Instacart, and Uber Eats. This Wednesday, our partner organization Fair Work Center is celebrating the grand opening of a new worker center in Yakima. This Thursday is International Domestic Workers’ Day. This Sunday is Juneteenth.
Three things to know this week:
WA state strengthened emergency rules to protect outdoor workers from extreme heat and wildfire smoke. Last year, two farmworkers died during intense heat waves in the Pacific Northwest, and many more suffered severe health consequences after working in unsafe conditions.
The City of Seattle announced funding for community organizations to ensure domestic workers of color know their rights. Nannies, house cleaners, gardeners, and cooks won the first-in-the-nation Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in 2018.
The Marysville School Board voted to keep the “Tomahawks” as the Marysville Pilchuck High School mascot, but said they will change the logo to “ensure it does not…disrespect the Tulalip Tribes.” Tulalip Youth who are students at the high school organized to change the mascot.
Two things to ask:
What if we eliminated forced arbitration altogether? A Southwest Airlines worker won a Supreme Court case to avoid going into arbitration with the company to recover unpaid overtime wages. About 60 million workers in the U.S. are covered by forced arbitration agreements which restrict their access to the courts and instead require labor rights claims to go to arbitration, a process that heavily favors companies.
Who could have guessed something called 1929 would crash? WA’s wealthiest humans have given up on their ballot initiative to repeal the capital gains tax. They dumped more than $1 million into the Initiative 1929 campaign, but polls showed most WA voters opposed their attempt to give themselves a big tax cut.
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
This piece in Crosscut highlights a handful of guaranteed basic income pilot programs across the state, which provide no-strings-attached direct cash payments to people in poverty. A new program in Tacoma gives $500/month to 110 low-income residents; another privately-funded effort by Hummingbird Indigenous Doula + Family Services will launch soon, giving 150 families $1,000/month. While these WA-based programs are currently tiny, they’re having good impacts so far, and we’ve also seen proof of how effective giving people cash can be at a massive scale: before Congress allowed it to expire, the monthly federal child tax credit lifted millions of families out of poverty. The idea is simple: people are experts in what they need most, so providing unrestricted cash lets them decide how to spend it, whether that’s paying bills, buying a toy for the kids, or even treating themselves to dinner out at a restaurant every once in a while.
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!