OPINION
January 2, 2012
You could order it Re "Sears, Kmart to shut up to 120 stores," Dec. 28 Your article about the possibility of Sears going out of business brought back childhood memories of the Sears Roebuck catalog. I grew up on a small farm in South Dakota in the 1930s and '40s. Next to the Bible, the catalog was the most important book in our farmhouse. That wish book was what helped supply us with basics (and once in a great while luxuries) because our town of about 200 people had only one small department store.
BUSINESS
December 27, 2011 | By Marc Lifsher, Los Angeles Times
Thousands of San Francisco workers are starting the new year with a raise. On Jan. 1 the city's minimum wage will rise to $10.24 an hour. That's the highest rate in the country and makes San Francisco the first place in the U.S. to mandate double-digit hourly wages for its lowest-paid workers. For Ace Wiseman, 27, a recent graduate of San Francisco State University who cleans tables for minimum wage in a Sunset District pizzeria, the raise from $9.92 an hour will buy a few more groceries.
NATIONAL
December 15, 2011 | By Noam N. Levey, Washington Bureau
President Obama circumvented Congress and moved Thursday to require that home-care aides be paid minimum wage and overtime, giving the fast-growing workforce long-sought assistance. Home-care workers, who now number close to 2 million people, have been exempted from federal labor law since 1974. And although many states, including California, Illinois and Maryland, have rules guaranteeing home-care workers minimum wage, overtime, or both, 29 states do not offer these protections.
BUSINESS
September 27, 2011 | By Marc Lifsher, Los Angeles Times
California's labor commissioner has sued real estate brokerage ZipRealty Inc. for nearly $18 million, including back pay, in her department's largest minimum-wage enforcement action. The complaint, filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court, accused the Emeryville, Calif., firm of failing to pay minimum wages and overtime to hundreds of agents throughout the state. ZipRealty markets homes statewide and nationally through the Internet but relies on employee agents to respond to online queries and shepherd deals to closing.
OPINION
September 23, 2011
Getting consensus on immigration issues is hard. But few would dispute that the existing system is broken. Its failure can be seen most clearly on farms: An estimated 70% of all agricultural workers in the U.S. are here illegally. Without undocumented workers, crops would rot in the fields. Skeptics need only consider the plight of growers in Alabama and Georgia, who say that new anti-immigrant state laws have put their harvests at risk. Latino migrant workers have fled those states because they fear being deported, and few documented workers or U.S. citizens have applied for the jobs even though they pay above minimum wage.
OPINION
September 21, 2011 | By Madeline Janis
Earlier this summer, the L.A. City Council ended the fierce competition for the multimillion-dollar food concessions business at Los Angeles International Airport, awarding contracts to three food service companies that will bring a variety of new local restaurants to the airport. Dozens of companies large and small vied for the contracts, spending thousands of dollars on lobbyists over a three-year period. Celebrity chefs from some of the hottest restaurants in the U.S. competed against one another to impress city officials and win the chance to open concessions at LAX. Here's how this newspaper described it: "The list of proposed restaurants is a microcosm of the local dining scene, from big names such as [Nancy]