Hello and welcome to the afternoon shift of the Village Voice's liveblog of May Day 2012, as the Occupy Wall Street movement calls for a "General Strike" and a day of protests around the city. Our reporters and photographers remain fanned out across the boroughs. We'll continue liveblogging their dispatches right here and bringing you the latest news as it happens. We also invite you follow us on Twitter (@VillageVoice) and you can also follow our correspondents from the scene: Nick Pinto, C.S. Muncy, Victoria Bekiempis, James King, Ben Sin, Sam Levin, John Surico, Robert Sietsema, Tejal Rao, yours truly, and, covering the OWS music events for our sister blog Sound of the City, Maura Johnston.

Stay tuned!

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Sam Levin

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, expected to run for mayor in 2013, addresses reporters today.

Christine Quinn, faced with the challenging task of simultaneously negotiating the interests of labor groups and business groups in a new living wage bill, has lost the support of the city's major business organization -- a disappointment for the City Council Speaker, who is expected to run for mayor in 2013.

The surprising news last night that the business group Partnership for New York City would no longer support the bill was a major shift from what was said at a press conference in January when Quinn was able to bring together business leaders and labor leaders and announce a compromise that both sides could stand by.

"Unfortunately, the original group of supporters we had that day in January are not fully intact at the moment, which is a disappointment, but I'm very proud and glad with the final version we are getting to," she told reporters this morning.

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Sam Levin

Shelby Knox, from Change.org, at an Apple protest in Grand Central.

There were more reporters than protestors at a rally today at the new Apple store in Grand Central. A lot more reporters.

But it's an important cause, especially for you iPhone-iPad-MacBook-Apple-loving folks, so listen up!

SumOfUs and Change.org, two groups speaking out against labor practices in China, partnered up today to pressure Apple to address recent reports around the inhumane labor conditions in the factories that build the technology giant's products.

Officially, the groups arrived at 10 a.m. this morning to deliver a petition to the store. But as soon as the organizers -- four or so of them -- arrived, it quickly became a media spectacle. We're talking about Runnin' Scared running in circles in a fruitless effort to keep up with dozens of cameras and reporters surrounding the protestors as they ascended the steps of Grand Central to enter the Apple store.

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Stuart Appelbaum

When Speaker Christine Quinn presented her compromised version of the Living Wage Bill last week, we immediately wondered how it would affect retail-clothing workers, #47 on the Voice's list of the 100 Most Powerless New Yorkers.

We got in touch with Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Via an email Q&A, we asked Appelbaum all of the questions we had about the proposed bill, from how many people it would affect, to if (after Quinn's compromise) it would actually help employees of tenants of city subsidized projects.

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Michael Cunningham was fired from his job at the New York Department of Labor in August 2010 after working for the state for 30 years. The D.O.L. suspected Cunningham of committing time-sheet violations and once they accrued enough evidence to confirm their suspensions they terminated his employment. How they gained that evidence, however, has become a matter of contention. Wired reports that Cunningham's employers implanted a GPS device into his car to trace his every move. Cunningham and the ACLU have filed a petition against the state, and they are currently awaiting a ruling from the appeals court.

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Striking Verizon employees confront workers on a pole on Alexander Avenue in the Bronx

As the Verizon strike enters its fifth day, we've come across various picket lines near Verizon buildings, here in the East Village and around the city. But what we hadn't witnessed until today was a scene we stumbled upon in the South Bronx, where members of the Communications Workers of America confronted "scabs" in the field.

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SCAB!

Forty-five thousand union workers for Verizon went on strike across the Eastern seaboard at midnight last night after labor negotiations faltered. Communications Workers America says that Verizon is demanding "more than 100 concessions from workers regarding health care, pensions and work rules." NBC reports more than 50 workers picketed the communications giant's headquarters at 140 West Street this morning. Verizon management assures that this will cause "limited disruption in service," so feel free to blame dropped calls on UFOs, the Illuminati or weak Trade Winds -- just don't blame the strike.

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​So who isn't investigating The Great Snow Clean-Up Fuck-Up of 2010? After nearly a week of nonstop bitching, public agencies are finally cracking down on what went wrong with the city's blizzard response last week (or at least angling for some good publicity). The feds have reportedly launched a fraud investigation to see whether sanitation workers sabotaged the plowing efforts, and the city's own Department of Investigation says it's launched its own probe.More >>

​Uh-oh. The Daily News says federal prosecutors are investigating claims that sanitation workers sabotaged last week's blizzard clean-up efforts to protest budget cuts. The New York Post previously reported that sanitation workers had confessed to a city councilman they'd been ordered to take their time plowing snow off city streets, and while the U.S. Attorney's office wouldn't confirm or deny anything to the News, "sources" tell the paper feds will "examine whether the wire or mail fraud statues were violated by pocketing overtime pay during an illegal job action." Oops. [SH]

New York's beleaguered actors waiters can celebrate today: Governor Paterson just signed into law new penalties for employers who bilk their workers out of fair wages and overtime pay. The law, which takes effect in April, hopes to curtail some of the problems that are "rampant" in service industry jobs -- including "restaurants, retail, and construction businesses where illegal immigrants make up much of the work force," the New York Times says.

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