If it's a labor union, then yes.
If it's an employers' union (such as a staffing agency, temporary labor service, or the like), then it can be a condition of employment.

The VW effort was met with intimidation by various Southern political interests, along with the Tennessee state legislature.

On the contrary, Google should give the Teamsters a wide berth since "interesting things" tend to happen to entities that oppose them (which are legitimized by a Supreme Court decision). Such engineers would find themselves on the wrong end of things when their buses have otherwise unexplained low reliability.

That applies to staffing agencies, which are no more different than labor unions - yet don't get crushed. Same bad representation for the staff under them, bad contracts for the larger part, and nobody really gets a good deal in the process.

Why do staffing agencies, temporary labor and the like get a pass despite being a union in every function save for being an employer's tool of evasion? Perhaps they need their PATCO moment so that they finally die or evolve beyond benefits-evasion.

You're wrong. Unions are strong in the South, just that they're the ones that represent employers and only employers that abide by the South's playbook.

For example, Volkswagen talks about setting up workers councils, and the entire South's political interests go into an apoplectic fit. The Tennessee state legislature and various political groups intimidated them near instantly; if they unionized, Volkswagen risked losing economic preferences along with other forms of intimidation towards workers. If Volkswagen succeeded, everything and the kitchen sink would be thrown at them to financially fail, as done in the 19th and early 20th Century.

Fixed that you to correct for fact.

Someone has to do the maintenance for the buses.

They'd just rinse and repeat until every bus service is Teamster-organized.

This isn't the South where even the companies get intimidated for showing support towards unionization.

Praise Edward Snowden.

That presumes that such information comes from parties interested in fact-finding and have not betrayed the trust of other individuals to gain it. Right now, such information from Snowden cannot be relied on as fact, but as a source of disinformation until a court can properly clear it.

Treating him and the "journalists" and "activists" as fugitives/co-conspirators is the only proper course of action until such are brought to due process. While the evidence against him is certain to convict, that does not give license to hide - it only gives license for others to find and bring him/others in.

Of course, that may be disheartening enough to have people do (-Infinity, Troll/Disagree/Overrated/Flamebait), but modbombing does not change the truth.

Then you end up paying the "advantage" back due to diseconomies of scale. On the other hand, the more permanent person has less worry over the same 15 months and better benefits.

Such short-term work is part of the problem, not the solution - as most people do not have the ability to outright refuse good work.

It's going to be quite hard to have such a mystery if modders end up revealing it or adding it to the game.

It'll take a complete reversion of immigration laws and regulations.

First of all, rip out the 1965 Immigration Act, which enabled these abuses.
Second, remove regulations like 20 CFR 655/20 CFR 656, which have no ability to enforce as intended (to prioritize citizens).

One can throw all the money in the world towards an H1-b, but citizens have something more valuable - freedom to move between employers. Guest worker programs only serve to square the circle of having a legal, captive, non-citizen labor supply in a First World country.

Kill off the guest worker programs and then see how much businesses have to cater to citizens - as they cannot offshore everything.

The exclusivity is what really turned people off about it, not the "privacy" concerns that came up.

Stop asking the H1-b candidates and start asking US citizens. There are plenty of good engineers in the US, much more if you become less picky.

Do you sincerely think that the Russians would house Snowden if he had no intelligence to hand over to them? Housing such an individual has substantial costs, especially with the gated communities they have to use and the people that have to be paid.

Until every "journalist" and source that had any connection to Snowden is unmasked, the answer to your question is indeterminate. It is a non-zero number sufficient enough for the Russian government to house him, but not precise enough to say whether the New York Times received more or less.

It would be amusing to see the Russians in such a dire economic state that they either hand Snowden to the US (in exchange for aid) or that the US makes short work of the Russians left to mind him.

While the New York Times has gone on leftward slants, it's not run by Russians.

On the other hand, the Russian government (which has received such information from Snowden) is run by Russians.