Why is our economy in the predicament that it's in today? High unemployment, sluggish growth...who's to blame? The unions, of course. The unions are the enemies of the working man. The working class must destroy unions for their own good.

Organized labor in America is a pitiful shadow of its former might. There's one exception, though: prison inmates.

The Way We Live Now: grossly violating the rights of unaccountable stateless corporations. Things have gotten so bad that even organized labor has found a safe harbor. Fortunately, a sea of bubbles is coming, to sweep us all away.

Minneapolis employees of the sandwich chain Jimmy John's are currently trying to unionize, which the New York Times calls "one of the few efforts to organize fast-food workers in American history." Is such a thing even possible?

New York is set to issue new guidelines on how restaurants pay their workers. New recommendations: $5 per hour wages, mandatory tip pooling. Our hardworking servers deserve more! Some suggested justice-based restaurant worker laws, below. Add your own!

Marijuana harvesters in Oakland, California have joined the Teamsters and negotiated a pay raise, pension, vacations and health insurance. It turns out handling bud all day is surprisingly taxing.

When the founders of AOL and eBay retired, they planned a life of philanthropy. They were so busy saving the world they apparently didn't notice their own workers were being brutalized.

In one month, four workers have attempted suicide at the Chinese factory Apple hires to make products like the iPad. Why? It's a mystery, but it's also easy to make some educated guesses about what's got workers going nuts.

Instead of constant emotional torture, things got physical last night on 16 and Pregnant. The pain was so bad in fact, it may single-handedly stop teenagers from having sex (unlikely!). In the immortal words of Wesley: To the pain.

Apple products are made in factories that regularly employ young teenagers, constantly work people more than 60 hours per week, and falsify records to cover up their misdeeds. That's according to the shameless gossiping muckrakers at... uh, Apple Inc.

Time Inc. has opened up a fantastic new market: charging its freelancers for the privilege of being paid for their work in a timely fashion.

Seriously, this whole Shop Class As Soulcraft idolatry movement full of retro-blue collar yuppies: stop it. You people are like hippies but instead of getting back to nature you want to get back to... floor cleaning jobs, apparently.

The new chairman of the New York Fed is not a banker or financier! It is Denis Hughes, the president of the New York State AFL-CIO. And the deputy chairman is Columbia University President Lee Bollinger! Crazy! [WP]

Some extraordinary communications have leaked to Bloomberg, showing Steve Jobs threatening his counterpart at Palm. It seems the Apple CEO — and supposed empowerer of creative workers everywhere — wanted to keep his workers locked down like so much chattel.

This morning we heard that 5WPR, flackery-mongering home of incompetent superflack Ronn [sic] Torossian, had a run-in with the Labor department yesterday. We have details from insiders. They are more ridiculous than you may have anticipated. Craziness, ahoy! [UPDATED below].

We're hearing from several sources that 5WPR, the PR firm of our friend Ronn [sic] Torossian, was raided by the Labor Department yesterday. Anyone who was there at the time care to share details? Email us. We'll keep you anonymous.

T-Mobile and CB Richard Ellis were sued by employees for requiring, but not paying wages for, after-hours communication via smartphones. Past court decisions, involving pagers, have hinged on employees' ability to engage in "personal pursuits."

After weeks of wrangling that nearly resulted in the shutdown of the Boston Globe, members of the Boston Newspaper Guild approved a new labor agreement with the New York Times Company by a 366-to-179 vote. [New York Times]

After months of jostling between the New York Times and the largest union representing employees of the Boston Globe, the two sides reached a tentative settlement around 11Ppm last night, perhaps paving the way for the Globe to be sold.

Yesterday the Globe's main union rejected a proposal from its parent company, the New York Times, that would've resulted in 10% employee pay cuts. The Times then announced a 23% pay cut instead, which slightly upset the Globe's union.