BossFeed Briefing for June 22, 2022. Last Wednesday was the 10th anniversary of President Obama signing the executive order that created the DACA program. Last Thursday was International Domestic Workers’ Day. Last Sunday was Juneteenth. Today, the days start getting shorter again. This Friday marks 42 years since 80,000 people joined a general strike in El Salvador protesting the US-backed military dictatorship and its death squads.
Three things to know this week:
The campaign to raise Tukwila’s minimum wage submitted thousands of signatures to qualify an initiative on the November ballot. Workers in Tukwila—including at Southcenter Mall—make $3/hour less than people doing the same jobs just a few miles away in Seattle and SeaTac.
Our sibling organization Fair Work Center celebrated the grand opening of Centro Chinampa, a new hub for worker and immigrant rights in Yakima. It’s the first and only worker center anywhere east of the Cascades.
WA Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler fired a staff member who spoke out about Kreidler’s racist comments and toxic behavior. In a statement on the firing, a spokesperson for the Insurance Commissioner said that “everyone wishes [the staffer] well in his future endeavors.”
Two things to ask:
How much money do you need to live the ideal life? That’s what a new global research study asked 8,000 people, the majority of whom said they could achieve their ideal life with “$10 million or less.” Thirty one percent of Americans surveyed said they would need at least $100 billion.
Who’s really doing the subverting? The Massachusetts Supreme Court blocked a ballot measure written by Uber & Lyft, which would have codified the treatment of drivers as independent contractors under the law. The companies—which spent $200 million to pass a similar ballot initiative in California in 2020—criticized the court’s ruling, arguing that opponents of their initiative were trying to “subvert the democratic process”.
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
A leaked internal Amazon memo reveals company executives are concerned they might run out of people to hire in US warehouses by 2024, reports Jason Del Ray for Vox. The turnover rate in Amazon warehouses is twice the industry average—around 100% annually—which means the company must replace hundreds of thousands of workers who leave each year. In the memo, Amazon leaders suggest various “levers” to solve the hiring crisis, including changing termination and retention policies, increasing pay, becoming more efficient at hiring, and speeding up productivity rates in warehouses. The last suggestion is particularly striking, because Amazon warehouse workers get injured at rates twice the industry average, the result of already-relentless productivity quotas—a fact that’s completely left out of the leaked memo.
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!