Last month, Bloomberg Businessweek published a big story on how Walmart tracks its employees to most effectively anticipate dissent and undermine potential organizers. The piece draws largely on documents produced in the course of discovery for a case before the National Labor Relations Board. (Walmart is accused of illegally firing labor activists.) Now, Walmart alleges, labor group OUR Walmart “intentionally disclosed documents marked and designated confidential.” The documents, according to Walmart, were protected by judicial order.

Workers at the Target store in Valley Stream, N.Y. voted against joining the United Food and Commercial Workers on Friday, 137-85. Had the measure passed, the Valley Stream location would have been the first Target in the U.S. to be unionized.

Engineer David Walsh has brought suit against his employer, Apple, alleging that the company misclassified him and others as exempt from overtime pay. The practice is endemic across California, especially at startups. Local labor laws set a high bar for exempting employees from overtime pay, and non-exempt employees can become very expensive for companies which demand workaholic schedules. I was misclassified years ago when working as a Web producer for Williams-Sonoma and got a nice settlement check after a visit from the National Labor Relations Board. The notorious "EA Spouse" blogger helped shake up labor practices across the entire videogame industry. While stuck at your desk missing your legally required meal break, read below to see if you're exempt or non-exempt:

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)