Explosive teachings
Lotta conflicting feelings about this week’s healthcare news. I mean, sure, there’s the absolute blinding rage laced with panic and despair, but there’s also just the day-in and day-out sinking feeling that comes from regular healthcare news. Like the fact that Waltz Health, a new startup from the former CEO of mail-order pharmacy OptumRx, just raised $35 million to create a marketplace consumers can search for prescription drug discounts. It joins Kalderos, another Chicago startup with $35 million in funding, on the mission of bringing “transparency to drug pricing.”
We’ll give them this: It is transparent. Because anyone who claims to think that the solution to rising prescription drug costs is better access to coupons has some clear loyalties.
Anyway, Waltz Health plans to hire up to 75 people this year.
Actually good startup Paladin, a platform for connecting pro-bono attorneys with clients who need their support, raised $8 million from a variety of big-name sources, and plans to use the money to double its 11-person team.
Network Perceptions is also doing just fine, raising $13 million and announcing plans to double its 40-person team. The cybersecurity company helps infrastructure providers like electric companies stay on top of threats to their systems. Useful, especially when there’s an active war with a superpower known for successfully hacking all kinds of things.
While it’s all growth for these folks, Cameo is not so lucky. The beloved Chicago tech unicorn and bailer-outer of people who forgot to get a birthday gift is laying off a quarter of of its staff, 87 people. The company seems like it should quite literally be minting money, what with it sitting between celebrities and the fans desperate to pay them. But speedy growth during COVID isn’t looking as sustainable now that people can actually go see celebrities in person again.
Boeing is also planning a retreat, announcing it will move headquarters from Chicago to Arlington, Virginia. Not great for the home team, but given Boeing’s track record of late, it makes sense to move executives closer to D.C. where they can more quickly apologize to lawmakers.
At least the Chicagoland area’s rep as a data center paradise remains unchallenged. Meta, the conglomerate formerly known as Facebook, is more than doubling its data center square footage in DeKalb, going for 2.4 million square feet of equipment to help it reach users worldwide. Yay. And yeah, of course there were tax breaks.
Let’s not forget, though, it doesn’t take a multibillion-dollar corporation to do bad shit. Howard Brown Health Center, an organization that provided free care to Chicago’s LGBTQ community through the worst days of the AIDS crisis, is being called out as a toxic workplace by non-nursing staff looking to unionize. Given that we are still trying to live through a pandemic, now would be a really good time for Howard Brown to get its shit together and give the literal angels working there whatever they need.
What they should not do: Fire the employees trying to bring complaints to light, as Lost Larson did with one of its employees who raised concerns about lack of adequate COVID protections. The National Labor Relations Board just forced the fancy bakery to pay a settlement for illegal retaliation.
A reminder though: Sometimes, the organizing works. After the Chicago Reader union loudly took to the streets outside his house, the paper’s wealthy owner has agreed to step down and let the Reader become a nonprofit, giving it a viable future for the first time in a long time.
Jobs, Glorious Jobs
Director of Content and Director of PR at the U.S. Soccer Federation
Don’t forget that U.S. Soccer said it would equalize pay between the men’s and women’s national teams, so make sure there’s a level playing field at HQ too. We’ve seen a fair few communications jobs pop up here over the years, always a bit suspicious.
Content Strategist, Media Coordinator and Deputy Creative Director, Social Media at the Obama Foundation
If your first thought was, I’d even take a pay cut, you are good people and we hope you get it. (But don’t take a pay cut.)
Orgs of the Week
Midwest Access Coalition and Chicago Abortion Fund. MAC is specifically looking for an engineering volunteer, while CAF has an open volunteering form. Both are accepting donations as well.
Inspiration of the week
“We have preached dynamite.”
—August Spies, speaking in his defense after a bomb killed a police officer during a peaceful labor protest in Haymarket Square on May 4,1886. Spies did not throw the bomb, he said, but would not deny that sometimes during revolutions, bombs need to be thrown.
“We have predicted from the lessons history teaches, that the ruling classes of today would no more listen to the voice of reason than their predecessors; that they would attempt by brute force to stay the wheel of progress. Is it a lie, or was it the truth we told?”
“The Haymarket Affair” and the subsequent conviction and hanging of four anarchists and labor organizers, including Spies, on little evidence, galvanized the labor movement. The incident and its repercussions are still recognized each May, when most of the world celebrates Labor Day.
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