> I just wish there was a way to get the powerful to understand that it's not a one way relationship

I guarantee you, they do understand that. This is not a matter of changing individuals by teaching them and "getting them to understand". The system as a whole must be changed. The mechanisms that allow those people to exist in the first place must be destroyed.

FTEs rely on executives on the current system, but it doesn't have to be that way. The opposite is not true, tho. There are no executives without workers.

As Abraham Lincoln once said:

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

Why not just require all large companies to be employee-owned co-ops? That's the only way you truly make it so that "their power derives from the consent of their employees".