Hundreds of workers at a major port in the United Kingdom — which serves as a critical logistical choke point — walked off the job on Tuesday, igniting a two-week strike in demand of higher wages that threatens to intensify the strain on beleagured global supply networks. The work stoppage may preview a wave of labor unrest poised to convulse the British economy in the coming weeks. Hundreds of thousands of employees across a sweeping range of industries — from bus drivers to garbage collectors to railway operators to college lecturers — are preparing to strike in protest of the the nation’s spiraling cost-of-living crisis.

In the latest organizing news, workers at a Home Depot store  in Philadelphia filed an election petition on Monday, for a unit of nearly 300 retail employees. The effort is part of the accelerating trend of “independent unionization,” reflected in recent election victories by the Amazon Labor Union, Starbucks Workers United, Trader Joe’s Union, Apple Retail Union, Chipotle United, the REI Union, Geico United, and others. Home Depot remains the world’s largest home improvement retailer. Should the union — Home Depot Workers United — prevail in the upcoming election, this Philadelphia store will become the first of the company’s thousands of U.S. locations to organize.

In wage and hour enforcement, New Jersey’s labor agency disclosed on Tuesday that Chipotle Mexican Grill has agreed to pay nearly $8 million to settle “widespread and persistent violations” of the state’s child labor laws. The news follows a similar announcement in New York City last month, where local authorities entered into a $20 million agreement — the largest in the city’s history — with Chipotle to settle wage and hour violations, as I described at the time.