BossFeed Briefing for September 20, 2022. Last Wednesday, Univision Seattle spoke with Katherine, a worker at Ezell’s Famous Chicken who is suing the company for permitting sexual harassment. Last Sunday, Hurricane Fiona made landfall in Puerto Rico, knocking out power across most of the island. Yesterday was the 6th anniversary of Seattle workers winning the strongest secure scheduling law anywhere in the nation. Thursday is the Autumnal Equinox. Sunday marks the first night of Rosh Hashanah.
Three things to know this week:
Consumer prices surged 8.3 percent between August 2021 and August 2022. Prices for basic necessities are skyrocketing: in the last year, grocery companies have raised prices by 11.4% and energy companies have raised prices 19.8%.
Minor league baseball players voted to form a union. While salaries for big league players start in the six figures, annual pay for minor leaguers is often as low as $10,400.
Rep. Cori Bush has introduced a bill in Congress to ensure workers get paid time off during extreme weather events like floods, heat waves, and tornadoes. Last December, six Illinois Amazon warehouse workers died after being required to work during a tornado.
Two things to ask:
How is this still legal? A New York Times analysis revealed that at least 97 members of Congress bought or sold stock in companies directly influenced by committees they sit on. When asked about the conflict of interest, many told reporters they had “no input” on their stock dealings.
Maybe they got their hands on secret driver pay data? An anonymous hacker broke into Uber’s internal systems, gaining near-total access to company data. In a message, the hacker noted that “Uber drivers should receive higher pay.”
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
Reporters with The Center for Public Integrity dug into how our state’s regressive tax system worsens the crisis of income inequality. Here in WA, those of us with the least must pay almost 18% of our annual income in state and local taxes, while the wealthiest few chip in just 3%. Like many states, Washington is overly reliant on sales tax revenue to fund public programs—a system that targets poor workers, tracing its roots to the backlash after the end of slavery, when rich white landowners across the United States successfully passed tax laws to prevent the redistribution of their wealth. In recent years, our movement to tax the super-rich has built momentum—we passed the capital gains tax on extraordinary profits during the 2022 WA legislative session—but we need to see further wealth taxes passed into law, especially since some of the wealthiest humans in the history of the world live in Washington state.
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!