Former Yelp employee Talia Jane was fired from her job after she wrote an open letter about how she couldn’t afford groceries and transportation on the wages they pay her. Unfortunately, Jane won’t benefit from Yelp’s new decision to raise wages for its workers.
According to Quartz, Yelp is raising wages for its hourly workers at its Eat24 subsidiary, which delivers food, and where Jane used to work. Workers who made $12.25 an hour will now make $14 an hour. Employees will also get up to 15 days of paid vacation, and 11 days of paid holiday.
Yelp emailed employees about these changes and maintained that they had all been in the works since the end of 2015. Jane told Quartz that she hadn’t heard about these changes while she still worked there.
Publised on Medium on February 19, Jane detailed in her letter how 80 percent of her income went to her rent, how she was subsisting off a 10-pound bag of rice, and how she had stopped using her heater:
Will you pay my phone bill for me? I just got a text from T-Mobile telling me my bill is due. I got paid yesterday ($733.24, bi-weekly) but I have to save as much of that as possible to pay my rent ($1245) for my apartment that’s 30 miles away from work because it was the cheapest place I could find that had access to the train, which costs me $5.65 one way to get to work. That’s $11.30 a day, by the way. I make $8.15 an hour after taxes. I also have to pay my gas and electric bill. Last month it was $120. According to the infograph on PG&E’s website, that cost was because I used my heater. I’ve since stopped using my heater. Have you ever slept fully clothed under several blankets just so you don’t get a cold and have to miss work? Have you ever drank a liter of water before going to bed so you could fall asleep without waking up a few hours later with stomach pains because the last time you ate was at work? I woke up today with stomach pains. I made myself a bowl of rice.
Hopefully she’s now working somewhere that can also give her this quality of life.
(Via Quartz)
