Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic

dimensions of our lives and those of our children.

I'm your host, Richard Wolfe. Today's program is going to be

talking about collective bargaining for public employees, about a strange old billionaire Bernie

Marcus who founded Home Depot and has something to tell us we will be able to smile about.

A little less funny is the failure of the Corporation Southwest Airlines over the Christmas New Year holiday, and we'll

have quite a bit to say about that. And then a little bit about that remarkable George Santos

candidate from the Republican Party. And in the second half of the show,

we will have our guest, Chris Hedges. I think we have a really good show for you today. So let's jump

right in. The National Labor Relations Act gave workers in the United States back in the 20th century

the right to strike. It was understood

to be foundational to democracy, putting aside how long it had taken this so-called democracy

to give workers that right. But if you read the National Labor Relations Act, you will quickly

see that one very important

group of workers was not covered by it.

In fact, several groups of workers were not covered.

Domestic workers, people who work in situations like that, that had a lot to do with non-white workers in this country, female

workers in this country. But the group I want you to think about now are public employees.

That's right. Millions and millions of people who work for cities, towns, government,

states, the federal government weren't covered under the National

Labor Relations Act. That was left up to each state. So it took even longer, decades in many

cases, for public employees to struggle long and hard over lots of opposition to finally get that right in a democratic society.

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