Labor Shortages

For more than four decades, a dreary, two-level jail in a corner of the Los Angeles Police Department's downtown headquarters has been an unwelcome pit stop for thousands of men arrested in the city each year. Accused of petty theft, murder or anything in between, the Parker Center Jail is where one waits -- sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for a few days -- to see a judge. Never a pleasant place, the jail has fallen into increasing depths of disrepair and inadequacy over the years.

The line of towering wind turbines stands motionless on the ridgeline above Interstate 70 in central Kansas, Y-shaped silhouettes amid the swirling snow. Despite the weather, dozens of technicians are working to get the 10-mile-long Smoky Hills Wind Farm ready to begin producing electricity. Jason Martinson, who is supervising the 56-turbine operation for Enel North America Inc.

The first to go was the English teacher. Six months later, the commerce teacher followed. The next year, 2005, the trickle turned into an exodus. By 2007, the departures from Mufakose 3 High School were like bricks in a collapsing building: math, science, accounting and many other teachers, all leaving their careers behind to work as cleaners, shop assistants, laborers in other countries. Zimbabwe's education system, once the best in Africa, is being demolished teacher by teacher.

Think it's bad losing your job in the middle of hard times? Try calling the state for help. In January, with the unemployment rate nearing 6%, nearly 12.6 million calls were placed to the state's toll-free phone number to apply for unemployment insurance benefits. But more than three-fifths never got through. Frank Hartzell knows the problem all too well. A laid-off Mendocino County social services worker, he tried calling morning and afternoon, 45 times in December.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has asked the federal government to review its immigration enforcement priorities, warning that work-site raids on "non-exploitative" businesses could have "severe and lasting effects" on the local economy.

With baby boomers preparing to retire as the best educated and most skilled workforce in U.S. history, a growing chorus of demographers and labor experts is raising concerns that workers in California and the nation lack the critical skills needed to replace them. In particular, experts say, the immigrant workers needed to fill many of the boomer jobs lack the English-language skills and basic educational levels to do so.

When Dr. Mark I. Langdorf began practicing emergency medicine more than 20 years ago, finding a specialist to help with a complicated case was easy. Newly minted surgeons and fledgling ear, nose and throat doctors would show up in the emergency room with boxes of doughnuts, hoping to pick up patients and build their practices. Today, specialists not only have dumped the doughnuts, they've abandoned emergency rooms in droves.

Nurses working at Orange County sheriff's jails are hobbled in their efforts to provide excellent medical care to inmates by significant staffing shortages, insufficient training, equipment problems and communication breakdowns, according to a grand jury report released Thursday. The grand jury review was prompted by published reports about inmate deaths that raised questions about medical care at the jails.

Federal officials announced Friday that they would assess the air traffic control staffing levels and their effects on safety at Los Angeles International Airport and two other key locations in California. The action comes at the request of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who contends that the nation's control towers may be understaffed. In addition to LAX, the Inspector General's Office of the U.S.

Earlier this week, the dean at USC's Keck School of Medicine warned of an "impending patient safety crisis" at the new County-USC Medical Center set to open next month, telling Los Angeles County supervisors in a letter that he was concerned that the hospital "will not be able to operate safely with the current staffing available." On Thursday, however, the dean, Dr. Carmen A.