BossFeed Briefing for October 19, 2022. Last Thursday, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Yakima-based Monson Fruit for permitting sexual harassment & retaliation. Last Sunday marked 163 years since white slavery abolitionist John Brown led an attack on an ammunitions depot in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Friday is Latina Equal Pay Day, which calls attention to the fact that Latina workers are paid just 57 cents for every dollar white men make doing the same work. Monday marks start of the final month for undocumented people to apply for $1000 from the WA COVID-19 Immigrant Relief Fund. Tuesday is two weeks until the November General Election.
Three things to know this week:
Madison with Strippers Are Workers presented dancers’ recommendations for improving conditions in clubs to the WA Senate Labor Committee. Dancers are calling for the legalization of alcohol service, an end to exploitative back rent, and improved security measures.
A former Starbucks manager in New York told the National Labor Relations Board that company higher-ups ordered him to single out pro-union workers for discipline. In one case, a superior asked him to look into the personnel file of a longtime worker and find “something in there we can use against her.”
Uber Eats is paying $3,333,088 to 10,467 gig workers for violating the Seattle hazard pay ordinance. For two weeks earlier this year, the company paid workers just $0.025 an order instead of the required $2.50 an order — a discrepancy Uber Eats attributes to a “software glitch”.
Two things to ask:
Does anyone speak Corporation? Kroger announced plans to buy rival grocer Albertson’s for $24.6 billion. In a statement, Kroger reassured members of the public that the monopoly would advance their strategy of “Leading with Fresh, Accelerating with Digital”, which apparently involves “Fresh, Our Brands, Personalization and Seamless.”
How do you square that circle? Tacoma City Council voted 6-3 to approve a ban on homeless encampments across much of the city. Just before voting for a camping ban which includes a $250 fine and/or a month-long jail sentence as punishment, multiple Councilmembers stated they don’t believe in criminalizing homelessness.
And one thing that's worth a closer look:
We hosted members of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent farmworkers union, in Yakima last week as part of their statewide tour opposing the Farmworker Modernization Act. The bill, which passed the U.S. House last spring but has yet to pass the Senate, expands guest worker programs and provides limited pathways to citizenship for some undocumented farmworkers after many years of work. Organizers with Familias Unidas argue the proposal is harmful and falls short of what workers need: they point to how difficult it can be to prove years of work history when paid in cash; the health hazards that make working for many years in the fields untenable; the anti-worker ag lobby’s enthusiastic support of the bill; and the potential for increased deportations of family and community members who are excluded from the bill’s narrow pathway to citizenship. At its core, the Farmworker Modernization Act requires undocumented farmworkers to spend nearly a decade working for low wages in hazardous conditions simply to prove they deserve to be treated like human beings by the federal government.
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!