BossFeed Briefing for February 27, 2017. We are now one week into the second month of the Trump Administration, and approaching the third month of the 2017 State Legislative session. The Congressional recess is now officially over, and the State of the Union is set for tomorrow.
Three things to know this week:
There's pretty much only one person who gets a paycheck to attend a Congressional town hall — and that's the member of Congress themselves. Hearing from constituents is literally their job. But Representatives Newhouse, Herrera Beutler, Reichert, and McMorris Rodgers still didn't show.
The Washington Retail Association plans to get more involved in Seattle politics. The anti-worker lobby group for Walmart and Target launched this "grassroots effort" because of "concern" about how progressive legislation keeps on spreading from Seattle to the rest of the state and the entire country.
On average big companies pay more than smaller businesses, but the gap is shrinking. That’s mostly because the big guys are paying their lowest-paid workers less than they used to, a shift that has significantly worsened income inequality.
Two things to ask:
What are they afraid of? The Arizona State Senate has passed a bill intended to allow protesters to be prosecuted for racketeering. A similar bill in Washington State which created a crime of "economic terrorism" was introduced this year but hasn’t moved forward.
Will this time be different? For more than 200 years people have been expressing worry that machines from the steam engine to the robot will eliminate the need for human labor. So far, work has continued.
And one thing that’s worth a closer look:
Being evicted can increase your chance of losing your job, according to a new study by housing justice expert Matthew Desmond. Of course it also happens the other way around — losing a job can obviously means less income which means a greater chance of not being able to pay the rent. But the instability caused by eviction can also itself lead to job loss, the new research suggests.
Read this far?
Consider yourself briefed, boss.