OPINION
November 26, 2011
The Times' Nov. 23 editorial, "Clueless candidates," which criticized Newt Gingrich for his call to loosen child labor laws and allow kids to work as janitors at their schools, prompted reader Mike Gallagher to write the following defense of the former House speaker's proposal: "I can only assume that the editor did not work as a child, unlike the children of most small-business owners. I've never known a working kid who didn't have time for homework, so long as there wasn't a long transportation requirement.
OPINION
November 22, 2011
It isn't just that some of the candidates for the GOP presidential nomination occasionally seem divorced from modern reality; it's that they're determined to re-fight battles that most of us thought had ended roughly a century ago. A case in point is newly inaugurated front-runner Newt Gingrich, who in a talk Monday at Harvard University denigrated federal child labor laws that date back to the 1930s. "It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods in trapping children … in child laws which are truly stupid," Gingrich said.
NEWS
November 21, 2011 | By Kim Geiger
Promising “extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America,” Newt Gingrich said Friday that he would fire school janitors and pay students to clean schools instead. Speaking at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the Republican presidential candidate and former speaker of the House challenged laws that prevent children from working certain jobs before their mid-teens. Gingrich blames “the core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization" for “crippling” children.
BUSINESS
October 11, 2011 | By Marc Lifsher, Los Angeles Times
The Fresh & Easy grocery chain has to fix what it calls a nonexistent problem, now that Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a bill banning the sale of alcoholic beverages at self-service checkout stands. Brown, just before midnight Sunday, approved a proposal that forces the British-owned chain, with more than 125 stores in California, to shift from an all-automated format to one that has at least one clerk on hand to check a purchaser's age before ringing up sales of beer and wine. The bill was one of 466 signed by the governor since the Legislature recessed for the year Sept.
BUSINESS
July 1, 2011 | By Maura Dolan, Los Angeles Times
Residents of other states who work for California companies are protected by the state's overtime laws during business trips here, the California Supreme Court decided unanimously Thursday. Employment lawyers predicted that the ruling would reduce business travel to the state and trigger hundreds of lawsuits against California companies in the coming days. Firms now typically pay employees in accordance with the labor laws of the states in which they live. The court said the ruling would protect Californians from being replaced by less-expensive temporary workers from out of state.
NATIONAL
September 9, 2010 | By Colleen Mastony
Her story had been lost amid dusty records that were long ago stashed in deep storage and forgotten. Forgotten until a retired federal agent, researching the history of Chicago law enforcement, stumbled upon a mention that, in the 1890s, she had become a police officer in Chicago. The date caught his attention. A female police officer in the 1890s? Now, after three years of research, Rick Barrett, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent and an amateur historian, says he has found definitive evidence that Marie Owens was not only the first policewoman in Chicago, but also the first known female officer in the United States.