There's sorta hope. The California Legislature just approved a bill to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour by the start of 2016. Currently the highest state minimum wage in the country is in Washington state, where workers make $9.19 an hour.

Organizers say that 100 people were arrested in 11 cities across the country yesterday during protests over Wal-Mart's low wages. They also say they plan to protest Wal-Mart stores on Black Friday, just like last year.

Today, a right wing think tank ran a full page Wall Street Journal ad implying that a rise in the minimum wage would cause fast food workers to be replaced by robots. The prospect of robo-dystopia did not deter the hundreds of chanting protesters who bent the corner of Broadway and Nassau at 11:15 this morning.

A German study has found that people who have the most sex also make the most money, further depressing the world's low-paid plebes who don't get any.

Yesterday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. This seems like as good a time as any to roll out a few more true stories from the Amazon warehouse workers who make the whole machine go. Jeff Bezos wouldn't be here without them.

Amazon is the future of retailing in America. Earlier this week, we asked the unseen Amazon employees who fill your orders to send us their stories. Here are five of their tales of life at Amazon.

With fast-food workers around the country striking for better pay, a new study finds that McDonald's could double all of its employees' wages and benefits—including the CEO's—and the cost of a Big Mac would only increase by 68 cents. The Dollar Menu would increase to $1.17.

One of these days— maybe sooner, maybe later, but definitely one of these days—Amazon will become the new king of retail consumerism in America. We know what it's like working for Wal-Mart and Target. But what is life like for the faceless workers that make Amazon go?

Last week, we brought you some true stories from Wal-Mart workers— stories that alarmed Wal-Mart so much that they (unsuccessfully) begged their employees to send us positive stories to balance them out. Since then, we've received many more, both good and bad. Here are some.

"Scabby," the giant inflatable rat that the Teamsters union sets up to protest nonunion workplaces, was stabbed by a scab in Chicago last weekend. The Rat Stab Scab was arrested. The judge on the case is named "Adam Bourgeois."

In the past, we have brought you several volumes of true stories from Wal-Mart workers, describing what life is like as an employee of the biggest retailer on earth. Union-busting and heartless corporate behavior stories abounded. Today, we bring you a few more plaintive wails from inside the Walton empire.

For months now, a coalition of community and labor activists have been pushing for the (perhaps impossible) dream of unionizing fast food workers in New York City, or at least getting them a living wage. Yesterday, some of those fast food workers pleaded their case to the City Council. Here's something worth remembering before your evening KFC.

The must-read capitalist profile of the week is BloombergBusinessweek's look at Costco and its CEO, Craig Jelinek. Costco is the second-largest retailer in America, after Wal-Mart. Their business practices could hardly be more different.

Today, Wal-Mart workers in at least three cities launched the first "prolonged strikes" in the company's history.

It's shocking to consider, but sometimes employers try to rip off their own employees. And sometimes those employees sue. More employees are suing every year, as a matter of fact. Why? Well, it's definitely not the fault of employers, say employers.

Amazon warehouse workers are forced to stand in line for 20 minutes or more— unpaid— at the end of their shifts, waiting for guards to search them for anything they might have stolen from work. They're suing, rightly.

Rescue workers in Bangladesh on Friday rushed to find survivors of Wednesday's horrific garment-factory collapse—but the death toll nevertheless climbed above 300, more than three times as high as initial reports.

A day after cracks were discovered in the building's edifice—but supervisors forced workers to work anyway—an eight-story garment factory and commercial center in Bangladesh collapsed, killing at least 70 people and injuring hundreds more. The disaster is the latest in a string of horrific workplace accidents at facilities owned and operated by the country's garment industry, which is among the world's largest—and cheapest.

Conservatives argue that black people should oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants, since immigrants can be expected to take low-wage jobs from black people. The WSJ's editorial page says that minorities should oppose a minimum wage hike, because it will end up costing them jobs. (They treat this as a simple economic fact, which it is not.) There's nothing like the hint of a new liberal policy to cause widespread concern for the welfare of poor minorities among Republicans.

Only 11.3% of American workers now belong to unions, the lowest percentage in nearly a century.