I think the vast majority of unions out there are good, but there are definitely a select few that give the rest a bad reputation.

At one of my previous jobs, our union was one of those that gives others a bad reputation.

It was a seasonal job, we had to pay the union whether we wanted to be in it or not. If we had an out of season work meeting for training, all of the money that we earned would go straight to the union and we might end up with a $2 check (if that).

We tried working with the union reps, but they just seemed so out of touch with our group. They would give themselves a big pat on the back for getting everyone a 2% raise and then raise the monthly dues… We barely made minimum wage so a percentage increase like that meant nothing to us.

10 years later and most employees working there are still just earning minimum wage while similar jobs in other cities nearby are earning twice that (at least).

Definitely not a movie night, you don’t get much of a chance to really know the other person from that, and if either one of you decides that the other is crazy it makes it a little harder to dip out.

Ideally something simple that’s good for getting to know the other person while being able to leave at any time. Coffee, shaved ice, frozen yogurt, etc. Then a walk through a park or along a beach, or just sit down/people watch, and discuss your interests to see if either of you are interested in a second date.

My plan is to vote in candidates at all levels that are endorsed by The Forward Party.

We need to overhaul our voting system so that we’re not trapped in this downward spiral of a 2 party system that we’re currently in. Ranked Choice voting, Star voting, Approval voting… they all have pros and cons but any one of them is better than the current system that we have.

The way we get better options for Presidential candidates is to have a voting system that gives other parties a chance.

I don’t care if I have to vote for a particular Republican, Democrat, or some third party individual for this to be accomplished. Following the trend of “vote out all Republicans/Democrats” is how we got here in the first place.

Welcome to Lemmy.

One important thing to point out, your upvotes and downvotes are mostly public here, so if you want to maintain anonymity with your votes you’ll want to setup a separate account for voting only and no commenting.

I tried a few apps for interacting with Lemmy and Voyager has been my favorite by far.

I still go back to Reddit for very niche communities that can’t be found here, or just don’t have the userbase to churn out content like they can. I use an app like “Stealth” to browse any of the subreddits I still frequent, but I’ve been able to replace a lot of the generic ones with Lemmy communities.

You will find a lot more users here that will take any chance they can get to blame capitalism for all of the worlds problems.

Some opinions are still heavily downvoted here, but you can always join up with an instance that ignores/doesn’t display any downvotes.

You will need to be a lot more active in your own communities if you want to turn it into the kind of place you want to keep coming back to.

As far as moderation goes, there are some Lemmy instances that have stricter mods than others. Just do a little research and pick a main one where you won’t get banned if you decide to voice your opinion about a dictator one way or another.

Just note, if you pick one that’s too small there’s a greater risk of them shutting down for one reason or another.