Employees

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.

If you've got a yen for skinny venti cappuccino the evening of Feb. 26, you'll probably be out of luck. Starbucks Corp. will close the doors at all of its nearly 7,100 U.S. outlets for three hours that day to give its baristas a refresher course on espresso standards. The world's largest coffeehouse chain has seen domestic traffic drop amid a faltering economy and growing competition from cheaper rivals. Chief Executive Howard Schultz said the renewed training of its 135,000 employees highlights Starbucks' push to "renew its focus on the customer."

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.

A year after Walt Disney Co. banned Hao Wei Metal Plastic Manufactory as a supplier, Huang Renzhong got a job there sculpting melted globs of poly-resin into statuettes of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Snow White. ? Starting at 8 a.m., Huang regularly pulled 15-hour shifts. Sometimes he worked through the night in the dust-filled factory. Sometimes a month would pass before he had a day off. He said he was never compensated for overtime. When he demanded back pay, he said, the factory owner threatened to have him beaten up. ?

Dear Karen: Is there a better way to assess my employees' performance than the traditional annual review? Answer: Managers typically don't like writing performance reviews and employees don't like reading them. A recent poll of small-business owners by management consulting firm George S. May International Co. showed that nearly half of business owners rated their own performance-review processes as fair or poor. Try "catalytic coaching" as an alternative, said Paul Rauseo, managing director of George S. May. Employee and manager exchange written feedback, goals and aspirations, then create a road map for contributing to each other's success.

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.

The city has placed two of its three animal control employees on paid administrative leave after an investigation into charges of animal cruelty, said City Manager Jim Hart. Neither the city nor local law enforcement would elaborate on the accusations. However, the Daily Press of Victorville quoted unnamed sources Thursday as saying some city employees had repeatedly put kittens and injured animals in cages and drowned them. One employee was put on leave Wednesday and the other on Thursday.

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.