Oh hey. Did we miss anything? Cool.
We’ll tell you what we didn’t miss. News that Foxconn has finally lost its tax credits, after failing to create many (any?) of the good jobs it promised Wisconsin. The state did get an entire fake factory though!
What an ending to one of our very favorite chapters on preemptively subsidizing capitalism at the expense of workers. If only there was a moral we could learn from it, some lesson to take away …
Nope! Let’s give Amazon $741 million in subsidies, predominantly from taxpayers in Black communities. If this WBEZ investigation of Amazon’s secretive and strong-arming practices doesn’t infuriate you, remember: The company is also accused of hiring Pinkerton detectives to bust up unionizing efforts like a goddamn fin-de-siècle villain.
Good thing small businesses caught a break with the Payroll Protection Program loans. What’s that? More than a third of the funds released to Illinois went to big businesses in chunks of $1 million or more?
What else what else what else … Nielsen is bringing the headquarters of its consumer tracking business to Chicago, though considering its largest office is already here, it’s only likely to bring about 50 jobs over the next two years.
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, a lot of the furloughs and layoffs threatened at the start of this pandemic have become permanent. Allstate is cutting 3,800 jobs and closing regional offices around the country to compete with cheaper rivals. United has no plans to backfill the 2,500 non-union jobs it terminated this year, even if demand for air travel does pick up.
Southwest is talking about nearly 7,000 furloughs, or a 10% pay cut for all of its employees. Boeing, apparently not expecting the airline industry to rebound anytime soon, is laying off another 7,000 people by the end of next year, adding up to 30,000 total jobs lost. And, as has been the case all year, service industry people are still well and truly fucked.
Google may try to pick up some of the slack, committing to hiring 10,000 employees over the next five years in cities with strong Black populations, in an effort to double the number of Black Googlers. Chicago makes the list, alongside New York, D.C. and Atlanta, with 1,000 hires planned for next year. We are cautiously optimistic about this one. It’s time businesses admit that if they’re going to really diversify their populations, they need to hire on a larger scale, not just cross their fingers that they’ll try to backfill positions with “diverse” hires.
And for a treat, we’ll finish up with some logistics news: FedEx is buying ShopRunner, an ecommerce shipping and returns business, and plans to keep it operating as a Chicago-based subsidiary. The “Nation’s Freight Handler” strikes again!
Jobs, Glorious Jobs
Senior Director of Global Communications for JLL
This job is specifically for the real estate firm’s Corporate Solutions business, aka designing the world’s offices. Considering … everything … it’ll at least be interesting to try and sell folks on JLL’s vision for the future of workplaces. Plus we’ve heard some really great things about JLL as an employer. Just make sure they’re not asking you personally to go back to working in an office.
Social Media Manager at Perkins Coie
Yes, this job is listed as available all over the place, but we hear they’re hoping for someone in Chicago first and foremost. You’d have to own your own learning in this role — no one’s going to be pushing you toward the cutting edge. On the flip side, it’s real easy to blow law firms’ minds with a little social media knowledge.
Director of Development at the Chicago Humanities Festival
This was always going to be a good job — CHF has excellent programming and no small amount of influence in the city, and being in charge of its fundraising efforts is going to put you in some powerful rooms. Now that the city has sliced through all of its arts funding, however, enterprises like the Chicago Humanities Festival will be under even more pressure to give Chicago the cultural life it deserves.
Inspiration of the week
“Without monetizing impacts, we’re left with the illusion that businesses have no impact.”
Harvard Business School professor George Serafeim, who is looking for new ways to monetize and measure all the negative side effects of a business. Worker exploitation, environmental harm, widening inequality — all of these things should count against a business’s profits, according to our new friend George. When you fail to take into account all the side effects and subsidies a business receives, you’re not looking at capitalism, but “a crony version of it.”
Plus the full article bashes Milton Friedman, and you know we won’t be missing an opportunity to beat up that dead economist.
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