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Elizabeth Warren shines at Nevada candidates forum
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By Helaine Olen
Opinion writer focusing on politics, economics and American life
April 30 at 12:36 PM
LAS VEGAS — On Saturday, the Service Employees International Union and the Center for American Progress Action Fund held a National Forum on Wages and Working People in Las Vegas, with several 2020 Democratic candidates in attendance. At the forum, Tichina Haywood, a night-shift hospital patient care technician from Chicago, stood up to tell Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) that she had recently quit her job. She was, she said, unable to continue to handle the pressure of assisting a nurse with up to 16 infectious patients for 12 hours at a time, for which she received $13.13 an hour. Her employer fought back attempts at unionization, which would have allowed Haywood and fellow employees to band together to improve their working conditions and pay. “I loved my job," Haywood said. “The thing is, my job didn’t love me.”
Snip: But it all felt scattershot until Warren, the final speaker of the day. The senator from Massachusetts connected all the dots to point to the both all-encompassing and systemic nature of the issues facing American workers. “There’s a lot that’s broken in America,” she said. adding that corporations can currently roll over communities, employees and customers, without anyone doing much about it. How to change it? “We need more power in the hands of employees,” she proclaimed. She then went on to tout her “structural" solutions, things that include her wealth tax that would pay for a significant student loan forgiveness and universal child care (among other things) as well as a plan to allow workers to vote on who should hold 40 percent of the seats on their company’s board of directors, something that she believes would make companies more cognizant of their employees’ pay and working conditions.
The crowd gave Warren the most passionate response, with more than one standing ovation and cheers from almost the beginning of her half-hour appearance. She received another enthusiastic reception a few hours later, when she took her pitch to a rally of about 500 people gathered in the cafeteria of Las Vegas’s Bonanza High School. In the crowd was Oklahoma native Linda Overbey, 61. She used to live in Los Angeles doing scenic design work for the film and television industry, but in the 1990s she discovered that the construction industry in Nevada offered more steady work. “I am a union painter,” she tells me proudly when I ask her what she does for a living.
Overbey says she likes Warren because “I think she does more than just describe the problem. I think she has solutions.” She also likes Biden, who historically enjoys strong union support and affection. When Biden received an endorsement from the International Association of Fire Fighters on Monday, President Trump immediately stepped forward with insults, referring to the “Dues Sucking” leadership who “rip-off their membership." But academic research shows that unions work to decrease income inequality. Not only do they ensure that their own workers are paid better than they would be if forced to negotiate their compensation on an individual basis, but they also often get their members better working conditions, too.
FULL story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/30/elizabeth-warren-shines-nevada-candidates-forum/?utm_term=.7a14b7f11c55
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) speaks at a forum on labor issues on Saturday in Las Vegas. (John Locher/AP)