A deal has reportedly been reached to avoid a paralyzing dockworker strike at East Coast ports

A strike at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles has ended with a settlement. Meanwhile, in New York, an effort to unionize fast food workers is just getting under way. One represents American labor's past. The other represents its future.

Earlier this month we told you about Unionmade, the upscale San Francisco menswear store that sells expensive clothes that are not, in fact, union made. The cherry on top of that particular style-over-substance outrage was the fact that Unionmade's logo bears a suspicious resemblance to the logo of the AFL-CIO. And now, the AFL-CIO's lawyers have sent them an angry letter demanding they change their name and logo.

By 11:30 this morning, several dozen people wrapped in winter coats and wielding hand-drawn posters had assembled on the corner in front of the Wendy's on the Fulton Mall in downtown Brooklyn, across from the Modell's and the Bank of America, with the purpose of addressing that most fascinating question in labor relations: Can fast food workers ever be unionized? Here, in New York, today, a lot of fast food workers decided to skip the theory and proceed directly to the "Fuck you, pay me" phase of the process.

Nanny. Domestic caregiver. Housekeeper. These are some of the most difficult (and often demeaning) jobs in the American work force. How much do you pay your nanny? The national median is only $11 an hour. For housecleaners or "caregivers," the average is only $10, according to the "first-ever national statistical study of domestic workers," which was released today. It ain't hard to tell: domestic workers are in desperate need of a union.

Knick-knack monster Wal-Mart is facing an uncharacteristically well-organized worker strike this Friday, on what is one of the busiest shopping days of the year. The company is scared enough to try to get the NLRB to tell the company's own employees they can't protest. Since we can't imagine that that long-shot attempt at crushing dissent will be successful, you should be ready for Wal-Mart Black Friday: Protest Edition.

Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the world. It is also stridently anti-union, fearing that a unionized workforce could be an existential threat to its cut-every-last-penny business model. Unions have been trying unsuccessfully for years to organize Wal-Mart's work force. (See here if you're unclear on why Wal-Mart workers might need a union.) But the latest push seems to have the big bad retailer a little shook.

Unionmade is an upscale men's clothing store, based in San Francisco and celebrated by GQ, that sells $258 "Vintage Styled Work Shirts" and $68 Cow Horn Combs and $565 "Vintage" Levi Jeans, and things of that nature. The company says that it "aims to improve the lives of our customers, community and suppliers by offering fairly priced products made from the best available materials." You might want to know, however, that Unionmade's products are not union made.

Hostess, the maker of Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, and other forms of American health food, is currently the target of strike by its workers. If you're interested in the particulars of the issues at hand, the union's side can be found here, and the company's side can be found here. ("The walkouts began after bakery union employees rejected a unilaterally imposed contract that included wage and benefits cuts of 27 percent to 32 percent.") Regardless, as a fan of artificially flavored cakes, you may be interested to know that management has threatened to shut down the entire company if a deal is not reached today.

Wal-Mart warehouse workers in California are now on strike. Please take this into consideration this shopping season.

This new lawsuit alleging minimum wage violations by Wal-Mart means Wal-Mart has more labor trouble than ever. Good.

Wal-Mart workers walked out yesterday. Cosco allegedly fired a labor activist. Target hates unions. Shop bodega.

When the sunny unemployment figures came out this morning, savvy conservatives knew that something rotten was afoot. A 0.3% decline in unemployment—one month before an election? Tell us another one, NObamatards. And now, these clear-eyed zealots may have found the smoking gun that they need to prove that something that is clearly not a conspiracy is, in fact, a conspiracy.

It takes remarkably few complaints about the NFL referee lockout to provoke a chiding comment about "bread and circuses." It's a novel insight, assuming your conversation occurs nearly 2,000 years ago in imperial Rome. But all too often it represents misplaced disengagement. And now, of course, it's over, which makes it even easier to dismiss—a hiccup of labor history remembered only by people who paint themselves blue and stand nearly naked outside in January.

The Chicago teacher's strike is over. It worked. The Verizon strike is over. It worked. Strikes work. Workers should have them more often.

That back-to-school chill is in the air, except in Chicago, where 26,000 public school teachers and support staff are on strike and more than 350,000 students are just fucking off all day instead of learning. Even though Chicago is a dull provincial city of little national import, everybody is talking about the strike because Rahm Emanuel is mayor and Obama used to live there. What's the story?

In the past 40 years or so, CEOs have gone from earning 20 times more than the average worker, to more than 230 times the average worker. Over the same period of time, unions have weakened to the point that successful companies feel comfortable asking for unprecedented concessions from workers at the same time the company is reaping record profits. What do these things have to do with each other? Everything.

A former household staffer and tutor for Rupert Mudoch and Wendi Deng's children is speaking out for the first time about the relentless nightmare that is working for the Murdochs: Screaming tantrums, nannies discarded by the side of the road on a whim, no benefits, unpaid overtime, young girls body-shamed by their mother—and near abandonment for workers injured on the job.

Wal-Mart has been the target of union campaigns for years. Why? Because Wal-Mart is the biggest fucking retailer in the world, and the most famous anti-union company in America. It makes sense for both practical and symbolic reasons. In L.A. right now, unions and worker advocates are trying to stop the construction of a new Wal-Mart in the city's Chinatown district. But Wal-Mart has an ally in the fight: the Wall Street Journal.

Since we started covering Target's voracious anti-unionism and labor woes last year, former employees have described the company to us as "humiliating," "'pleasant' slavery," and "the sketchiest place I ever worked," among many other things. But—to our surprise—Target is also one of the "World's Most Ethical Companies."