Surprised they didn’t instruct Bradley to rub his hands together and grin menacingly

I haven’t been directly involved in a contract negotiation, but I’ve listened to my union leadership talk about the bargaining process enough to pick up on a few things:

• Check and see if you can find out what similar unions in your area have won out of their most recent contract. It will both give you a baseline of what you can reasonably expect, but also may be what management themselves will use as precedent so you’ll be prepared either way.
• Management offers often have a way of being presented in a similar manner as a slimy car salesman trying to pull the wool over your eyes with a great-sounding monthly rate that’s actually more expensive in the long term. Be prepared to run the math on their offers and counteroffers, especially when they say something like “well we can’t give you X, but we’ll give you Y which is better” as often it sounds nice but the math doesn’t pan out. This is particularly an issue with signing bonuses as they sound great to members, an extra grand in my next paycheck!, but you might run the numbers and see that the benefit you had to give up for it would have saved your members twice that over the life of the contract.

Oooh fun. I’ll start with fast fashion chain H & M and the abuses in their supply chains

More than 540 workers at factories that supply the two retailers have described incidents of threats and abuse, according to two separate reports published last week by Global Labour Justice on gender-based violence in Gap and H&M’s garment supply chains.

The reports claim that these allegations, recorded between January and May this year in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, are a direct result of pressure for quick turnarounds and low overheads.

Not third world but global issues with H & M’s emissions that damage the third world by extension:

Furthermore, one pillar of H&M’s sustainability strategy is “Circular and Climate Positive”, the company aims to become a fully circular business that is climate positive by 2040. Yet H&M’s net emissions of direct and indirect emissions of greenhouse gasses increased by 18% in 2020. This result is interesting as the COVID-19 pandemic reportedly led to reduced orders and production. As such, they have seen a smaller demand for clothing and still produced more emissions of greenhouse gasses, this also goes to show that they do produce more than demanded.

I guess that the discussion shouldn’t be about what sexual material we should or should not be shielding kids from, but rather that the laws are designed to create bread and circuses distractions for cultural conservatives with a dash of neoliberalism.

I guess it’s like you said about emphasis, “think of the children!” is designed to get people to emphasize on the debate about what’s appropriate for children, so the debate doesn’t discuss what they’re actually trying to do.

I don’t think shielding them outright is the real purpose with this law, as this passage hints at:

Speaking with The Gazette last week, Mason City’s Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Bridgette Exman argued it was “simply not feasible to read every book and filter for these new requirements.”

These laws are constructed such that it isn’t, here’s the list of banned books, but rather giving districts vague, open-ended requirements knowing there’s no realistic way to comply. That way a group of busy body zealots can find the ones that fell through the cracks, they bring lawsuits, the state can fiscally punish the school, and Fox And Friends can talk about it as an example of the culturally insert fascist dog whistle agenda to poison our youth. It’s about creating ammo for the culture war and austerity regimes.

When you really, really don’t want your weekends interrupted by door-to-door proselytizing Mormons.

Yeah they were investigating the police chief who led the raid.

Is that an MST3K reference?

It’s like two siblings that are constantly picking on each other, but will bring down the wrath and fury if anyone else does it.

“Look, I know the CIA ended up being full of shit the last 312 times they drummed rationales for invading another country unprovoked, but Drumpf made them feel bad so now anything saying they might be wrong is fake news.”

Bro, men used to make up

Still do in some circumstances; actors and politicians on stage and in film are almost always wearing a certain amount of makeup.