BossFeed Briefing for June 12, 2017. The special session of the State Legislature continues to continue this week… and continues to continue to not show any visible signs of progress towards agreement on a budget. Reports have recently been picking up that Republicans in the U.S. Senate may be close to reaching agreement on a healthcare repeal bill. And while paid holidays are not required under Federal law, BossFeed was in fact on vacation last week.
Three things to know this week:
Every previous U.S. Labor Department under every previous presidential administration has held that a worker's immigration status does not affect their right to minimum wage and other labor standards. But workers and advocates are increasingly concerned this practice has changed, creating new barriers to enforcement, and effectively incentivizing wage theft.
Ontario, Canada is raising its provincial minimum wage to $15/hour, lifting pay for 675,000 workers. At the current exchange rate, $15 Canadian is about $11.14/hour in U.S. currency.
Amazon is offering discounted Prime memberships to people who receive any form of government assistance through an EBT card. About half of all U.S. households are currently Prime members.
Two things to ask:
But do they tip the catering staff? A “five-star wedding” runs about $5,000 a guest, according to people who work to organize the weddings of the ultra-rich, but reject the job title of “wedding planner” because they associate it with Jennifer Lopez. New-money clients sometimes hire consultants to provide social media and PR strategy for the weddings, while old money clients like fifth-generation Rockefellers supposedly “will put the au pairs and the nannies and whoever raised them at the head table.”
Anyone have any ideas? Vacation resorts charging up to $1,200 a night say they’re struggling to find staff who can maintain their high standards, and also tend to their horses. Seems like there must be something that could be raised the would make more workers interested in taking a given job, but the notion seems not to have occurred to the stressed-out luxury peddlers.
And one thing that’s worth a closer look:
Surveying the political landscape in Great Britain, anthropologist, political thinker, and early Occupy activist David Graeber asks if people can become bored of being hopeless. Graeber suggests that despite the many defeats of working class politics in the UK, the aftermath of the Great Recession there has provoked a return to utopian thinking. The provocative piece — even more valuable in view of last week’s strong electoral performance by Labour — touches on everything from steampunk to Scottish science fiction, asking if perhaps despair has run its course and we’re on the cusp of historic change.
Read this far?
Consider yourself briefed, boss.
The BossFeed Briefing is our look at the world of work, wages, and inequality.