DO YOU EVER FEEL...
like the headlines on the latest disasters of climate change and social justice are only the tip of the (melting) iceberg? Like beneath the surface there are billions of hidden, everyday disasters that we never hear about because they don't make the news, or they impact fewer people, or they have yet to be recognized as culturally or socially significant?
What comes to mind for us are issues of mental health, family health, poverty and food access, and many others.
On the one hand, daily life tends toward overwhelm in these last eighteen months, and we're not in the business - spiritual or profitable - of adding to folks' emotional labors. Nevertheless, it has always been part of our process to slow down and notice the smaller things. The ability to impact change in small ways can be a way out, to freedom, rather than a burrowing deeper beneath the insurmountable burdens of what we cannot change.
While this weekly newsletter has been on hold since the last Tuesday in July, we have had the chance to notice how this small communication out into the world has an impact on our daily lives. We want to thank you for reading, and listening. It matters to us.
There is much in store for this fall and winter, especially in terms of guest contributors, both here and via our blog, GFJ Stories. You can keep up with the latest in our tidbits below. We also want to share a summary of some of our own policy shifts here at GFJ, both as a reminder of where we are at, as a company, and a way to share what we are learning.
// Compensation Policies for 2021 / 2022 //
What a beautiful thing it is to look out over the 900+ jobs posted on the site and know that they all pay $10/hr or better (many state minimums are much higher, and we always default to the highest legally required wage).
As of January 1, 2022, all of the jobs posted on GFJ will be required to pay $15/hr (or the state minimum, if it is higher).
Once we began to learn more about minimum hourly wages, our attention was drawn to federal minimum salary policies, and their own state counterparts, which can also vary by region within a particular state (New York City, for example, has a minimum salary of $58,500 for overtime-exempt workers, while the federal minimum is $35,568). We are in the process of implementing the same requirements for salaries as we have been with hourly wages, and look forward to making this more clear on our job posting form.
As we've made this transition, the invisible work of corresponding with employers has been, at times, disheartening, but primarily enriching and encouraging. The number of jobs being posted, after a significant and understandable dip in March of 2020, is testament to how many employers are out there, ready to provide wages that reflect the value of labor. Initially, we anticipated a much slower building back from those job losses, and we were prepared to accept the built-in risk of turning down job posts from folks who could not offer to meet our minimum. Instead, this job board has been thriving under these policies, with almost double our 2019 numbers of new subscribers each week, and the challenge has been twofold:
1. to withstand the criticism from job posters whose budgets cannot meet those requirements - many of whom are farmers, whose work we deeply believe in and wish to support, and
2. grappling with how best to invest in Black, Indigenous, and other individuals, organizations, and communities of color who have always, and continue to, lead the work on transformational shifts in policy and culture.
As we experience these challenges of growth, we return to the knowledge that these small changes in our organization are still not enough, as Michael Brown elaborated in his March newsletter. But the answer is not to be found in giving up. The answer lies within the process of continued work and adaptation.
To that end, our policies on tipped wages will be folded into the $15/hr base wage requirement of 2022 - this hourly wage must be guaranteed for any tipped positions. It is our hope that as we look ahead to 2023, the reliance on tipped wages and its foundations of inequity will become more and more a thing of the past, so that eventually we will not post any tipped positions whatsoever.
In the meantime, we hope to hear and be a part of more conversations around tips and how they benefit and/or harm the workers who rely on them.
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