Employees

Some people think Sam Zell should reread his new employee handbook. During a meeting last week with Orlando Sentinel employees, the Tribune Co. chairman ended his answer to a photographer's questions about hard news coverage by directing a two-word obscenity at her. A video of the meeting made its way to YouTube and on Monday was on the media gossip website Gawker, which described Zell as a "salty billionaire."

In the weeks leading up to the launch of a new payroll system, Los Angeles Unified School District officials had plenty of warning that the $95-million technology project would have serious problems. Critical hardware had failed numerous times. Flawed data collected over decades proved difficult to clean up and input into the new system. Payroll clerks complained that training had fallen far short -- more than 60 schools didn't have a single staff member who'd received any training.

Computer equipment containing the private financial data of every employee of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was stolen earlier this week, prompting the utility to pay for a credit monitoring service for each of its 8,275 workers. DWP General Manager H.

Forget salaries, expense accounts or keys to the executive washroom. Employee loyalty is won or lost over the cleanliness of the bathrooms and the amount of sticky goo on the carpet. One in three workers surveyed recently said they had accepted a job -- or quit one -- because of the most basic working conditions. The respondents' chief complaints by far: the state of the indoor atmosphere, the gripes being about either hot-as-the-tropics heating or Antarctic air conditioning.

The mayor's office acknowledged Thursday that two top hires it introduced this week are technically on loan from the San Diego Unified School District. One of the employees is Angela Bass, who was presented at a Monday news conference as the superintendent of instruction for the two academically struggling high schools and four middle schools that will fall under the stewardship of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Chrysler is trying to cut its way back to significance. It's going to hurt. The automaker's 71,000 employees will be on "mandatory vacation" for two weeks in July when all operations across the country are shut down, the company said Thursday. A forced break is drastic, though for Chrysler perhaps not surprising considering its financial straits. After losing $1.

Diners in this food-obsessed city are used to exotic offerings such as chili squid salad, risotto Milanese with oxtail ragu and marinated noisettes of venison. But this winter a controversial new item has been showing up in the fine print of menus at some of the hottest restaurants: a surcharge to help pay for worker health insurance.

A lawsuit filed by seven hotels seeking to avoid paying a higher minimum wage has cost roughly 2,000 workers a combined $4.7 million in lost income, according to a report to be released today by a pro-union nonprofit group. The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, which last year persuaded the City Council to pass a $10.

As the capital of information technology, Silicon Valley may have more gadgets per capita than any other place on the planet. Yet, even here, "always on" can be a real turnoff. Frustrated by workers so plugged in that they tuned out in the middle of business meetings, a growing number of companies are going "topless," as in no laptops allowed. Also banned from some conference rooms: BlackBerrys, iPhones and other devices on which so many people have come to depend.

Some workers are doing it at Dunkin' Donuts, at Hilton hotels, even at Marine Corps bases. Employees at a growing number of businesses are starting and ending their days by pressing a hand or finger to a scanner that logs the precise time of their arrival and departure -- information that is automatically reflected in payroll records. Manufacturers say these biometric devices improve efficiency and streamline payroll operations.