Is the entire staff of the Village Voice preparing to jump off a cliff together? The NY Press reports that the once-mighty downtown alt-weekly, which has seen its editorial and business-side staff hacked to pieces since it was bought by New Times two years ago, is on the verge of a walkout over contract issues. Voice stalwart Tom Robbins says if the union there doesn't get what it wants, "all bets are off." The problem here: this paper is in dire economic straits and would surely welcome a good excuse to lay off its entire staff and start over with an all-24-year-old writing staff, at $30,000 apiece. Strikes at shaky print outlets have become totally counterproductive. New Times boss Mike Lacey is probably rubbing his hands in glee at the prospect. But hey, we hope we're wrong! (UPDATE: We're told a strike is set for July 1 if a suitable contract isn't in place). [NY Press]

Lori Melton is an attorney at the Fragomen Del Rey Bernsen & Loewy law firm, a specialist in "corporate immigration" — that is, obtaining H1-B visas for workers. She's scheduled to share her expertise today on the "Evaluation & Disqualification of U.S. Workers," a $199 seminar led by a liaison to the Dept. of Homeland Security. Think she'll show? On Monday, the U.S. Dept. of Labor announced it has begun auditing all permanent labor certification applications filed by attorneys at Fragomen, the "Corporate Immigration Law Firm of the Year," for improper attorney involvement in the consideration of U.S. worker applicants.

SEIU Local 1877, which represents area janitors, was out in force at Cisco today. The union's contract expired at the end of April, and it looks like the threatened strike has materialized here, as well as in Los Angeles. While the perception is that even service employees can become millionaires in the Valley, that's only if you get equity and happen to work for a company that succeeds. The reality?

Last week, iGate Mastech was fined $45,000 for placing 30 online job listings in the spring of 2006 with the condition that only H-1B visa holders need apply. The company helps foreign workers obtain a visa (often for a fee), and then contracts out their labor to companies at a tidy profit. The contracting company doesn't have to worry about dealing with immigration authorities, paying health benefits and can lay the worker off without cause or severance — often resulting in a revoked visa and possible deportation if the worker can't find new employment quickly enough. As our tipster points out, iGate Mastech VP of immigration and compliance Tripti Noorani has successfully processed 20,000 H-1B visas for iGate Mastech employees since 1990. Maybe the company was just trying to help H-1B holders currently in the country stay in the country?

It's May Day! International Workers' Day! When we get together and march with our working brothers and sisters in memory of lost comrades. Sometimes there are sing-alongs! And riots! Let's all hold hands and sing The Internationale, then march on Union Square! Of course, we won't—Americans (outside of some hippies in Minneapolis) don't really celebrate May Day anymore (well, some immigrants do too). Have we forgotten the Haymarket affair already? (Yes.) In 1958, by the way, Dwight Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 to be both "Loyalty Day" and "Law Day." Subtlety was not particularly prized then (nor now). President Bush's annual Law Day proclamation always brings tears to our loyal eyes. Now we prepare for Cinco de Mayo, the holiday that celebrates when the Mexicans out-drank the French.

College classifieds site Uloop, the subject of a labor complaint filed by fired employees, previously had to settle a wrongful termination suit, according to a tipster. A marketer and founding member of the team was fired last fall, and filed suit arguing that it was discriminatory. Unlike the rest of the team, veterans of the dot-bomb who were churchgoing Christians, he was young and Jewish. Uloop settled the case, paying $50,000. As for any hints that company management may like unions even less than Jews, notoriously anti-union newspaper publisher Gannett made invested an undisclosed amount in December. Update: Turns out the marketer in question is "Silicon Valley Publicist" Denis Hiller, who can thank his lucky stars he won't have to spin Uloop's latest possible transgression.

Uloop's Cal Poly campus representatives Austin Garrido and Sarah Doolittle, pictured here in their company shirts, have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board after being fired by the student social network. The dismissal came only minutes after posting a message on the company's internal site expressing an interest in forming a union after discovering their paychecks were two dollars an hour lighter thanks to an unannounced pay cut, reports school newspaper The Poly Post. It is illegal in the United States to take action against employees for discussing union organizing efforts. I've asked Uloop and the reps for comment. (Via SFist)

As part of its brave new plan to stop hemorrhaging money, Starbucks went out and bought a company called Clover that makes coffee machines. These Clovers cost $11,000 each, and brew one cup of coffee at a time. We're not math whizzes or anything, but at that rate, those better be some good fucking cups of coffee. So the New York Times sent a coffee connoisseur to taste seven kinds of beans from the new machine, and he came to the stunning conclusion: not even a magical $11,000 gadget can make burned coffee beans taste good.

The average compensation of a Goldman Sachs employee was $660,000 last year, and chief Lloyd Blankfein took home the largest Wall Street CEO payday in history in 2007, at $69 million. The average salary of a worker in Goldman Sachs' corporate cafeteria, as paid by food service firm Aramark? $21,000 per year, according to labor union UNITE HERE. That is, of course, a huge gulf in pay. But why is the union bringing this up now?

An important ongoing story has come to our attention: the so-called Poopgate scandal of the Cherry Hill, NJ Courier-Post. It seems that newsroom morale has reached such a low level that an anonymous pooper or poopers has purposely pooped in both the men and women's bathroom—not in the actual toilet, so use your imagination. The excrement in the men's room sat for 13 hours before being cleaned up. Employees are using Poopgate as a rallying cry for their righteous indignation; management has sent in investigators to get to the bottom of the case [GannettBlog/ Philadelphia Will Do] Below, the entire protest letter from the newsroom to management, which portrays the errant poop as the embodiment of a "climate of crisis." We will keep you informed of the situation as it develops, obviously. [UPDATE: We hear that Mergermarket may also be experiencing poop issues. Anywhere else? E-mail us.]

FreshDirect "suspended" a couple dozen employees and fired "at least one of them" this week. Nearly all of them were Hispanic immigrants, and the grocery delivery company claims they didn't provide accurate proof of their legality. Coincidentally, there's a FreshDirect warehouse employee union vote scheduled for December 22-23—funny how these things work out, huh?

CBS News writers represented by the WGA have voted to authorize the Guild to call a strike. Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, was all like "This is a wake-up call to CBS News management. We're saying that we are really at the end of our rope," CBS News was basically all like "Whatevs, we've got enough non-union workers to write the news without you." No walkout is imminent, reports Times media bunny Brian Stelter. In the event that News writers do strike and CBS's Les Moonves is really just scrounging around, we humbly submit asking John Fitzgerald Page anchor all the shows, all the time.

Transit union leader Roger Toussaint reports to the Tombs this afternoon to being serving his 10-day sentence for leading the three-day strike against the MTA in December in violation of the state's Taylor Law. The News prints an exclusive! interview with Toussaint today, conducted on the eve of his incarceration, in which he talks about what a challenge this will be, especially for his family.

The doormen and the building owners reportedly reached a tentative deal at the last minute last night. So a strike won't happen. Nor will our plan of sneaking into 740 Park for a look-see. Alas.

So a double-super-secret source deep within the Time & Life Building explains how the buyout portion of the Time Inc. job cuts will work. Seems that under union rules, the company has to accept voluntarily buyouts for two weeks before it can start laying people off involuntarily. People who take the offer get a payout calculated by a formula involving some mix of current salary and years of service. Last time there were layoffs the company offered people over 50 or with more than 15 years of service an extra 5 years' credit toward their pension as an inducement to pack it in; this time, there's no such offer.

Mediaweek is reporting — and Time Inc. management just confirmed to us — the death toll at 1271 Sixth Avenue today.

We reported Monday on the Great Cafeteria Switchover of 2006 underway at The New York Times — it seems the Times Co., in its infinite nickel-pinching wisdom, outsourced food-service duties to Restaurant Associates, which promptly canned many longtime employees. The Upper West Siders who staff the paper know they should detest this, and yet they're conflicted. A Timesperson submits this early report:

Big changes afoot — big, outsourcing, job-costing changes afoot — at the New York Times cafeteria. Word came Friday:

More Labor Strikes on the Way, Weingarten Warns [Metro NY]

As big labor's big hero, Roger Toussaint, goes around the city receiving rockstar-like welcomes and begging for money with which to pay TWU 100's millions of dollars in fines, it's important to remember not just lazy blue-collar workers who benefit from union protection. Lazy white-collar workers can benefit, too — and, as we all know, there are no white-collar workers lazier than magazine writers. Which is exactly what Time Inc.'s Newspaper Guild local wants all the magazine publisher's employees to remember.