Tech:NYC Digest: March 15

Tech:NYC Digest: March 15

March 15, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Tuesday, March 15, 2022 

Happy Equal Pay Day! In today’s digest, another 100 municipal employees terminated over vax mandates, Gov. Hochul’s plan for to-go drinks hits a snag, and Tech:NYC board member Reshma Saujani’s new book on transforming women’s relationship to work.

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By the numbers: 

  • New positive cases statewide: 2,753

    • New positive cases, NYC: 1,689

  • NYC Positivity Rate: 1.2 percent (+0.2 percent)

  • NYC Hospitalizations: 363 (-10)

  • Statewide Vaccine Progress: 

    • New Yorkers with at least one dose: 89.3 percent

    • New Yorkers who are fully vaccinated: 75.9 percent

In today’s latest:

  • Coronavirus cases are once again surging in several European countries, potentially signaling that the US will soon be next. Several factors are likely at play, including relaxed mitigation measures, the spread of the B.A.2 variant, and waning vaccine protection. (Axios)

  • Pfizer announced it would ask US regulators to authorize a second booster shot for all adults 65 and older. (Washington Post)

  • In one of the first polls of his administration, Mayor Adams received a 61 percent approval rating so far. (Patch New York) 

  • The NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection is planning to extend its efforts tracking coronavirus through the sewers after completing its initial pilot program last year. (Gothamist) The wastewater program has been particularly helpful to labs that do genetic sequencing to detect emerging variants of COVID-19.

  • More than 100 municipal workers were terminated for refusing to get a second vaccination dose required under New York City’s COVID mandates, a month after less than one percent of city employees were fired for similar reasons. (New York Daily News)

  • Permanent to-go cocktails may have hit a snag: some New York lawmakers are pushing back against Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to legalize them. (Gothamist)

In other reading:

  • Inside the High-Stakes Race to Test the COVID Tests (New York Times)

  • New York’s Mayor Is Building an Agenda Around Food. Will It Satisfy? (New York Times)

Today is Equal Pay Day, symbolizing how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. The latest government data shows women are currently earning 82 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts. (CNBC)

  • Women in low-paying industries, particularly Black and Hispanic women, are losing billions of dollars every year — exacerbating an already stark gender pay gap, according to a new analysis by the Labor Department.

  • The Labor Department also found that 42 percent of the wage gap is the result of what economists call “occupational segregation.” Social factors such as unequal caregiving responsibilities, lack of professional networks, and workplace discrimination — all further exacerbated by the pandemic — contribute to occupational segregation.

Reshma Saujani, Founder & CEO of the Marshall Plan for Moms and Girls Who Code, says the Great Resignation is a “once-in-a-generation, once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to finally close the pay gap. Saujani sat down with the Washington Post to discuss her new book “Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why It’s Different Than You Think),” which debuts today.

  • Saujani’s book outlines nine workplace policies that companies can implement to support their female employees, such as subsidizing child care, implementing gender-neutral paid leave, and addressing women’s mental health.

Saujani stresses that companies, governments, and individuals all have a role to play to support working women:

  • “Women have been sold this big lie. We have been made to feel like it’s our fault if our partners are not doing enough. If I can’t raise my hand for that promotion. If the government doesn’t give me paid leave or affordable child care. COVID laid bare how fundamentally broken our workplaces have always been. And that we had never, ever had a shot at getting to 50 percent of anything, right? Until we fix this broken structure.”

The White House will issue a new regulation that would ban the use of salary history in the federal hiring process in hopes of diminishing the wage gap. President Biden is expected to sign an executive order encouraging pay equity and transparency among federal contractors. 

And while occupational segregation is slowly declining with each generation, it could take years to determine how the pandemic and a tight labor market might reshape the workplace for women.

In other reading:

  • Why the gender gap may get bigger as more women return to work after COVID (Fast Company)

  • Tech companies reboot in-person work with an emphasis on flexibility (Crain’s New York)

  • How Hybrid Work Can Improve Downtown Spaces (The Atlantic)

  • Sundays for Dogs, a New York-based pet food brand, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Imaginary Ventures led the round.

  • March 17: Virtual: Caregiving: the new DEI lens for your family benefits strategy, with DocuSign senior director of global benefits Ellen Meza and Maven VP of People Karsten Vagner. Hosted by Maven. Register here.

  • March 21: Virtual: #newtovc: Developing Your Fund Thesis, with Union Square Ventures partner Brad Burnham and Brooklyn Bridge Ventures founder Charlie O’Donnell. Hosted by Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. Register here.

  • March 31: Virtual: The Future of NYC: Charting an Equitable Recovery for All, with Federal Reserve Bank of New York president and CEO John C. Williams, BlocPower founder and CEO Donnel Baird, Regional Plan Association president and CEO Tom Wright, and more. Hosted by the New York Fed. Register here.

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