Worth the fear

When the rest of the world is diving through coins, what do you want to do?

Ooohoohoo, looks like the ghosts are going to be real busy this holiday season! After telling big tales of rising costs and unreasonable employees, U.S. corporations went ahead and enjoyed, on average, a 37% increase in profits and the fattest margins since 1950. 

Employees, for all their good work, saw an average 12% increase in wages. 

Somewhere in that 25% gap, we hear the rattling of chains!

Don’t get caught being Scroogey this season. Share Get Hustlin’ with your fellow underpaid friends.

Speaking of people who are definitely getting visitors on Christmas Eve, Miami-based Ayr Wellness is buying up Dispensary 33 for $55 million, putting an end to one of the last independent legal weed slingers in Illinois. All those corporate owners might have a little something to do with why so few cannabis employees are unionized. The big players in Illinois — Cresco, Ascend, PharmaCann and Curaleaf — are all working to keep employees from unionizing in one way or another. It’s almost like they’re approaching legalization as an opportunity to extract maximum profits, regardless of who gets hurt. See? The weed business really is just like healthcare!

This is as good a time as any to say that while unionization is good, organized dicks are still gonna be dicks. The city has dropped its vaccination lawsuit against the Fraternal Order of Police, which responded by thoughtfully agreeing to protect the safety of Chicagoans by vaccinating the entire membership. Oh wait, no. They shared a photo of an officer flipping the bird and promised to keep fighting the mayor. Cool. 

United also is telling its employees to get vaccinated, and winning the court cases to get it done. Unfortunately, the airline is also telling about 900 operations employees to move from Chicago to Arlington Heights. Since those employees are unionized, however, the details have to be negotiated and mutually agreed to. United says the bulk of corporate employees will still stay downtown in the Sears Tower. 

If you’re looking for a job, market research platform Tegus may be looking for you. Having just closed a $90 million round of funding, it plans to add more than 400 jobs in the next year, and expand internationally with its first overseas office in Ireland. Meanwhile back in Chicago, Tegus is hiring in product design, HR and customer operations as well as engineering and sales.

EarlyBird may not be announcing a big hiring wave after its paltry-by-comparison $4 million funding round, but it is so CUTE we’re going to write about it anyway. The app aims to teach kids about investing by having friends and family donate money or stocks to an account that can’t be touched until the beneficiary turns 18. Also a smart business model, assuming they can skim off a percentage of the interest as it accrues.

Jobs, Glorious Jobs
Editor, Apple News, Local at Apple
Would you look at that — an Apple job that’s not in Cupertino or at the store but in Chicago journalism. Huh. Can’t say we’ve known anyone who’s worked at Apple News, so go get it and let us know.

Manager, Global Internal Communications and Manager, Social Media & Content Strategy at Mondelēz International
Sure, there might be some messaging challenges around supply chain and labor issues, but you’ve got friggin’ Oreos on your side. Cakesters back in 2022, baby. 

Coalition Director at Athena
Eager to work against all the online shopping this holiday season? Athena is looking for someone to lead its coalition of more than 50 organizations “dedicated to defeating unchecked corporate power” aka Amazon. Thanks to Notes From Your Dad author Scott Smith for the tip!

Inspiration of the week

“That’s the trick: focus on the thing you love so much that it’s worth the fear.”

—Min Jin Lee struggled as a writer for decades before finding success in her 50s with Pachinko, a thick, multigenerational novel on diaspora that is about the last thing you’d write if you wanted fame. This whole interview with her — about how to find the confidence and the meaning to keep plugging away at the work when there’s no one cheering you on — is worth a read or five. 

Forward this email to anyone who’s in love and afraid. They can sign up here to get twice-monthly reminders to focus on the first more than the second.

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