Photo snapshots depicting envelopes full of cash sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (endearingly known as ICE) from an employee at an organic farm in Duvall led to a $1 million fine being handed down U.S. District Court in Seattle yesterday.

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Yes, it's May Day today - a somewhat loosely defined global holiday designed to bring attention to worker's rights as well as an opportunity for civil protests of other social injustices.

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Along with being Tax Day, it's also Equal Pay Day. In fairness, I didn't realize this until stumbling on a story from the Puget Sound Business Journal. But that doesn't make it any less important. Women in Washington earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, and the National Committee on Pay Equity uses Equal Pay Day to draw attention to this injustice - nationwide, not just in our state. Today's date symbolizes how far into 2012 women had to work to earn the same thing men earned in 2011.

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I'm the new guy at the Seattle Weekly. Started this morning. In an attempt to relate to my new coworkers and build relationships (and especially after reading this confidential memo from Managing Editor Caleb Hannan) I'm going to start dropping a whole shit-ton of fucking swear words around the office. It just seems like the thing to do.

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An investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) confirmed allegations that the Postal Service discriminated and retaliated against a Seattle employee who helped a co-worker file a safety complaint. The Department of Labor is now in the rare situation of suing the Postal Service for violating federal whistleblower protection laws.

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Keep your stupid suggestions to yourselves, thanks.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union is not exactly known for backing away from a fight. But the feisty workers apparently draw the line at calls for strikes coming from out-of-state Occupy protestors.

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Peter McGraw, spokesman for the Port of Seattle, tells Seattle Weekly that he's taking a threat of a "total West Coast port shutdown" by Occupy and labor protestors to "very seriously."

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Desperate times call for desperate measures. With the imminent freeze threatening to ruin Washington's precious apple crop, and a severe shortage of migrant laborers in parts of the state, Governor Christine Gregoire and Department of Corrections officials worked out a deal that sent 105 state prison inmates to Grant County to pick fruit. In other words, illegal immigrants are being replaced by guys that have actually done something seriously illegal.

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Still reeling over the The Morning Call's crushing report of warehouse workers in Pennsylvania being subjected to triple-digit temperatures and close-to-sweatshop conditions, Amazon today released numbers that the company touts as proof that its workers are safer than those in other industries.

What Amazon doesn't say, however, is perhaps the most important fact of all.

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Hold on, I'll tell you about this next story as soon as I'm done checking Facebook.

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