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Unions boost wages for the non-union members; they are vital to workplace safety. Employees have been told for years there are dozens if not hundreds to replace them, so aren't these interesting developments? Employees are stakeholders not equipment and need representation.  

I've worked both sides having been management and union at various stages. I left the workforce six years early and hated the corporation I worked for as a non-union employee. The CEO was busy buying up whatever he could and doing crap to boost stock value. You know, making sure he got his dividends and thereby a raise. I, on the other hand, was working my butt off and had not gotten a raise in 3 years. They constantly, and I mean every year, screwed with our insurance. I had a horrible schedule and crap bosses that left me in charge and didn't pay me for that either. I had hundreds of hours of sick pay I never used when I left, because I don't like to lie and someone would lose their day off if I called-in. I received no pay for that or even a "thank you, you are exceptionally reliable". Why did I stay at all? Simple-they paid for my pension plan. I get the last laugh once a month.

That CEO's incompetence led to the corporation being absorbed by another. He just testified during the Theranos trial because he managed to lose $367 million to a scam run by an immature con-artist. Maybe it was because they had something in common....greed and the willingness to exploit others. We need those unions!

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Assuming that Congress passes the PRO Act, (or passes legislation that nullifies the election nullification and voter suppression laws of the oligarch states), we are still ignoring the root cause of all of these problems, and it's not the filibuster. As long as money is speech and corporations are people the oligarchs will continue to work every angle and manipulate their public sector decision-makers to maintain their status quos, i.e., treat labor like chattel whenever they can get away with it. This will also hold true if voter rights legislation were actually passed, in that the oligarchs are tenacious in their efforts to cheat to win elections (after all, they are the best) and they will never stop trying as long as they have the power to do it regardless of the law. We’re not going to get better until we have enough of us to acknowledge the problem and collaborate to remedy it. The good news is that there is a proven strategy and plan to fix things, as I wrote in a Comment here a couple of weeks ago,

“We “just” need 3.5% of us (~12 million citizens) to unite with persistent nonviolent resistance, and do it with 21st century technology and knowledge, (i.e., best practice-based solutions). The urgency of such an endeavor requires that our most respected and influential progressive leaders collaborate with each other to inspire enough of our citizens to participate if we are to avoid the final environmental tipping points on Earth. We don’t have time for the big individual progressive movements to act on their own anymore. We need them to pull together starting with severing the control that the oligarchs have over our government, or the oligarchs will continue to swat them down individually like they (the oligarchs) have since Reagan’s reign solidified their control.”

I suspect some of the biggest hurdles will be competition for audiences gets in the way of working together and “Not Invented Here” syndrome, so if you can figure out how to overcome that, and know how much it will take to engage the progressive thought leaders to collaborate, it should be all downhill from there.

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I just saw a headline to the effect that Aaron Rodgers has been surprised by the pushback. Relevance: your reference to "influential leaders." Apparently, there is a critical mass of negative response that can burst the "bubble" of disinformation. Now Matt. McConaghey (sp?) is maybe getting his education broadened: or was he going to run as a fascist anyway? (not sure about vaccinating his kids....)Point is, progressives don't get to pick the "influencers" but maybe the influencers can be influenced.

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As always, it depends. If we want our progressive leaders to unite and get 12 million of us to compel our elected leaders to meet their purpose (by using best practice-based solutions to promote our general welfare), God is in the details (and it’s not that complicated). If we continue to have the oligarchs running their grifts on our poorly educated citizens to control our government’s decision-makers, the devil will remain in the details. And as far as “influencers” like Rodgers (and the rest of us for that matter), critical thinking does not guarantee good decision-making, the best we can hope for is that it makes it more likely. I think that the influencers who have learned to be good learners would be the target market for the progressives to influence.

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