Reportedly poor, unsafe working conditions in the retail giant's U.S. warehouses led last year to repeated strikes and threats of legal action by subcontracted workers. According to Eidelson, however, labor groups are unimpressed by Wal-Mart's response -- namely that Wal-Mart would employ the system it uses to monitor international distribution warehouses to monitor U.S. ones. The move seems particularly striking in the wake of a deadly fire in one of Wal-Mart's Bangladeshi distribution centers in which 112 workers died. Via the Nation:

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NEW YORK –  Some security guards at John F. Kennedy International Airport have voted to go on strike next week if their employer doesn't respond to their concerns over issues including training and equipment.

Security worker Prince Jackson said about 100 employees of Air Serv Corporation voted Thursday to authorize a strike for Dec. 20. The employees are not unionized.

Another group of workers, for Global Elite Group, is scheduled to hold a vote on Friday.

Air Serv said it plans to speak to its employees about their concerns in the coming days and weeks. Global Elite said its management is in constant dialogue with its staff.

The workers handle security issues for the facilities, such as directing traffic in front of the terminals and making sure non-passenger areas like the tarmacs are secure.

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According to a report by Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman at Politico, the union counteroffensive is setting its sights on fighting conservative state leaders in next year's gubernatorial elections, particularly in the Midwest. Via Politico:

The AFL-CIO has already built up sizable campaign operations in Pennsylvania, Florida, Nevada and Wisconsin – the site of a titanic 2012 gubernatorial recall fight – in addition to Ohio and Michigan, union officials said. The labor giant deployed new staff to those states about a year ago as part of what AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka has called the “permanent infrastructure” of national unions.

... Labor leaders have vowed to make Snyder regret signing the “right to work” law he approved this week. Beyond Michigan, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett have appeared vulnerable in polling.

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Well, the voters spoke in November and dramatically voted down Proposal 2, but then this right to work discussion just continued to escalate and was becoming very divisive. So the way I viewed it is, it's on the table. It's a hot issue. Let's show some leadership. So I stepped up to say when I review it, I think it's a good thing. It's about being pro-worker. It’s about giving freedom of choice to workers.

Watch a clip of the interview via MSNBC below.

UPDATE 1.50 p.m. (EST): The Michigan House has approved both right-to-work bills, pertaining to both public and private sector workers, and the legislation will now be sent to Gov. Rick Snyder, who vowed he would sing the bills into law.

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It was a sneak move -- GOP lawmakers only announced Thursday morning that they intended to enact the so-called right-to-work bill (aptly described by its opponents as the "no-rights-at-work" bill). Right-to-work laws ban requirements to pay dues or fees to a union as a condition of employment --  studies have consistently shown that states with right-to-work laws have lower wages for union and non-union workers.

As a study by Elise Gould and Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute found:

[O]ur findings -- that "right-to-work" laws are associated with significantly lower wages and reduced chances of receiving employer-sponsored health insurance and pensions -- are based on the most rigorous statistical analysis currently possible. These findings should discourage right-to-work policy initiatives. The fact is, while RTW legislation misleadingly sounds like a positive change in this weak economy, in reality the opportunity it gives workers is only that to work for lower wages and fewer benefits.

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Last month, a fire in a factory used by Wal-Mart killed 112 workers. There were no fire exits. Despite the fact that more than 700 Bangladeshi garment workers have died since 2005, Wal-Mart and Gap refused last year to pay higher costs for safety. Bloomberg cited comments from a document produced by Wal-mart’s director of ethical sourcing and a Gap official for the Dhaka meeting. It stated:

"Specifically to the issue of any corrections on electrical and fire safety, we are talking about 4,500 factories, and in most cases very extensive and costly modifications would need to be undertaken to some factories. It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments.”

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As the Los Angeles Times reported:

It ends a grueling battle between both sides that threatened to damage the fragile U.S. economy. Since the strike began, 20 ships diverted to rival ports in Oakland, Ensenada and Panama, while other freighters docked offshore waiting for a resolution... The strike began Nov. 27 as the clerical workers' union voiced frustration about shipping line employers outsourcing jobs, an accusation the Harbor Employers Assn. has denied.

Though the union is small, it was backed by the 10,000 regional members of the ILWU, which honored the picket line and refused to work. By the end, the strike shut down 10 of the 14 cargo container terminals at the nation's busiest seaport complex.

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Reports from organizers rallying in Times Square in support of the strike suggest that as many as 200 workers walked out Thursday to demand fair wages. The Huffington Post noted that employees, the majority from McDonald's around the city, continued to walk off the job throughout the day, making official strike numbers difficult to confirm. "At a McDonald’s on Madison Avenue at 6:30 am, 16 workers picketed. According to Raymond Lopez, one of the 16, that was almost half of the store’s total workforce of 40 people," HuffPo noted.

Radio Dispatch host John Knefel and writer Jesse Myerson, both reporting from the Times Square rally, posted the comments and chants of some one-day strikers on Twitter:

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An Associated Press reporter searching the Bangladesh factory Wednesday found these and other clothes, including sweaters from the French company Teddy Smith and the Scottish company Edinburgh Woollen Mill, among the equipment charred in the fire that killed 112 workers on Saturday. He also found entries in account books indicating that the factory took orders to produce clothes for Disney, Sears and other Western brands.

Garments and documents left behind in the factory show it was used by a host of major American and European retailers, though at least one of them - Wal-Mart - had been aware of safety problems. Wal-Mart blames a supplier for using Tazreen Fashions without its knowledge.

The fire has elevated awareness of something labor groups, retailers and governments have known for years: Bangladesh's fast-growing garment industry - second only to China's in exports - is rife with dangerous workplaces. More than 300 workers there have died in fires since 2006.

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The release noted that "the same number of associates missed their scheduled shift as last year," but hundreds of protests in 46 states beginning Thursday evening have drawn attention to the retailer's poor labor practices while according to The Nation, workers struck at stores in Dallas, Kenosha, Wis., San Leandro, Calif., and Clovis, N.M. At least one worker went out on strike at stores in Ocean City, Md., Orlando and Baton Rouge. Rep.-elect Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) joined a Walmart worker as she walked off her job in St. Cloud.

Walmart stores rang up almost 10 million transactions from the time doors opened for Black Friday shoppers at 8 p.m. Thursday until midnight. Meanwhile the following strikes and protest actions have been reported:

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Ships waited at six of the seven terminals at the Port of Oakland, as intermittent rain soaked hundreds of angry workers who carried signs and blocked entrances during the one-day protest over stalled contract talks.

Passing motorists blared horns and supporters pounded drums as strikers chanted, "Shut it down, we're a union town!"

"We're letting management and the public know that they can't treat us like that," said Lynn Riordan, a communications staffer for Service Employees International Union Local 1021.

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"Black Friday," wrote Eidelson, "workers have pledged -- barring concessions from the company -- will bring their biggest disruptions yet." Walmart employees across the country have a host of grievances including unsafe and unsanitary working conditions, sexual harassment, excessive hours, forced labor and low pay. Ned Resnikoff at MSNBC flagged a leaked internal document (first obtained by HuffPo) that revealed that base pay  at Walmart's Sam's Place stores can be as low as $8 an hour (or $16,000 per year), with wage increases in increments as low as 20 or 40 cents per hour. To put this in context, Gawker recently highlighted a Demos study that says that raising the salary of all full-time workers at large retailers to $25,000 per year would lift more than 700,000 people out of poverty, at a cost of only a 1 percent price increase for customers.

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"The name UNIONMADE is an overarching concept and narrative for the store, signifying that we strive to carry well made and aesthetically timeless goods."

It's the latest example of faux-workerism -- akin to Levi's "We are all workers" campaign -- (UnionMade's logo even copies the AFL-CIO's) while unions remain under threat and retrenched in the United States.

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"It's going to force my employees to go out and get a second job," Metz admitted to the Mail, saying he felt he had no choice.

Metz has also considered adding a 5 percent surcharge to customer bills, but has no plans to implement this idea.

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Writing in the Guardian Wednesday, writer and sex worker advocate Melissa Gira Grant points out the dangerous but all too common conflation of the terms "trafficking" and "sex work" present in Proposition 35 and anti-trafficking efforts in general. Gira Grant explains that, at the expense of many victims of coerced labor, the bill only defines "trafficking" as involving the sexual exploitation of women and children. She writes:

This schism over who gets to define trafficking is about to come to a head for California voters in the form of Proposition 35, which, if passed this November, will set higher criminal penalties and fines for those who commit what the authors of the bill define as sex-trafficking, as opposed to labor trafficking. It will also force those convicted of "trafficking" to register as sex offenders and submit to lifelong internet monitoring – whether or not sex or the internet were involved in their case.

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"This is not only a violation of China's labor law, it is also a violation of Foxconn policy and immediate steps have been taken to return the interns in question to their educational institutions," a Foxconn statement announced, according to Reuters. The 56 underage interns found will now be sent back to their schools.

This is not the first labor scandal for Foxconn, Apple Inc.'s largest manufacturer. In Northern China in September a riot broke out at a Foxconn plant assembling iPhones over living conditions at the factory's on-site dormitories. Foxconn has been forced to improve working conditions at a number of its Chinese iPhone and iPad plants following numerous reports of labor abuses and the suicide of 14 Foxconn factory workers in China in 2010.

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If the experiment is a success, the company overall could come to rely more on part-time workers. Those new employees would likely not enjoy the same health benefits that all employees currently do. "Today we offer health care to all of our employees," said Rich Jeffers, [a spokesperson for Darden]. But under the Affordable Care Act, which sets minimum standards for the health care being provided, "we can't offer that."

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