Daniel Gross looks a lot like your average Starbucks (SBUX) barista. The 28-year-old is slim and clean-shaven, dressed in tan cargo pants and a T-shirt.

But Gross would rather talk about worker solidarity than lattes and soy milk these days. A volunteer organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Gross claims his involvement with the union got him fired from a New York City Starbucks a year ago. Now he’s preparing to go before a judge on Aug. 6 to make the case for himself and other baristas he says have been fired or intimidated for union activity. Seated in the one-room headquarters of the IWW’s local in Queens (N.Y.), Gross says it’s all part of a broader battle to change the way American companies treat their employees.

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When you launch a company, the organizational structure you select–-corporation, limited liability corporation (LLC), partnership, sole proprietorship–-will likely feel like one of the more mundane decisions you make.

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Wegmans is a family-owned company, founded in 1916 by John and Walter Wegman. The original name was the Rochester Fruit and Vegetable Company.

Wegmans is headquartered in Rochester, New Danny Wegman is CEO; his daughter Colleen Wegman is president and his other daughter Nicole is vice-president of restaurant operations. His late father Robert Wegman, who died on April 20, 2006, was chairman. Robert was the son of co-founder Walter Wegman. During his life he distinguished himself as a pioneer in the retail food business, as well as a generous donor to educational institutions and other charities.

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A new distribution deal inked by National Lampoon with YouTube, the giant video portal, says a few things about the state of the multi-media entertainment company.

As with any company, survival hinges on the ability for National Lampoon to grow with the times. This means establishing new distribution channels.

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According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), every month in the United States some 100,000 pounds of CDs become outdated, useless or unwanted. Every year, more than 5.5 million software packages go to landfills and incinerators.

CDs and DVDs are made from materials including polycarbonate plastic, petroleum-based lacquer and paints, aluminum and other metals. These materials release chemicals that contribute to environmental and health problems as well as global warming, both when they are produced and when they are destroyed.

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American business professionals are uninspired. Only 10% of employees look forward to going to work and most point to a lack of leadership as the reason why, according to a recent Maritz Research poll. But it doesn’t have to be that way. All business leaders have the power to inspire, motivate, and positively influence the people in their professional lives.

For the past year, I have been interviewing renowned leaders, entrepreneurs, and educators who have an extraordinary ability to sell their vision, values, and themselves. I was researching their communications secrets for my new book, Fire Them Up. What I found were seven techniques that you can easily adopt in your own professional communications with your employees, clients, and investors.

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Dealing with people, says Michael Lopp, "is messy, messy stuff." Lopp is a senior engineering manager at Apple, creator of the popular technology blog Rands In Repose, and author of Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager.

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Toward the end of my three week trip I was invited by my young Russian host and friend Nicolai Vasilevich and his lovely wife Yulya out to dinner. At the end of a wonderful meal Yulya asked if I would like a banana. I politely declined and thanked her, and explained I was most satisfied with the meal. But the whole while my mind was racing: "What do I do? Do I offer her a banana even though they are as close to her as they are to me? What is the polite thing to do?"

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The American truckers, environmentalists, and politicians who are sounding the alarm about the potential dangers of allowing Mexican tractor-trailers onto U.S. interstate highways rarely mention an important fact: Hundreds of Mexican-plated trucks already deliver cargo all over the United States, and have done so for years.

Teamsters union members have waged angry protests at the border and on Capitol Hill, waving signs saying "NAFTA Kills" and "Unsafe Mexican Trucks."

But more than 1,000 south-of-the-border companies are already allowed to drive cargo beyond the border zone under a long-standing exemption to the U.S. moratorium on Mexican long-haul trucking.

And these Mexican drivers and trucks have had better driver and vehicle safety records than their U.S. counterparts in recent years, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation–although opponents say many violations never get recorded because of sloppy government record-keeping.

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“MTV has been responsible for breaking artists from Latin America, Asia and India beyond their natural and domestic markets because we have the global platform to do so,” said Bhavneet Singh, managing director and senior VP of emerging markets, MTV Nets Intl. “We will be in a position, for example, to take some of the Arab artists to the MTV European Music Awards. Music translates and travels across the world. We will be able to export the best of Arab music outside of the Middle East.”

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