Wages And Salaries

When a security firm contracting with Los Angeles County went bankrupt earlier this year, hundreds of workers were not paid for their hours guarding county clinics, Sheriff's Department buildings and Fire Department facilities. On Tuesday, Supervisor Gloria Molina urged county lawyers to find a way to pay them about $200,000 in wages she said they are due, prompting a bitter exchange among her colleagues. International Services Inc., which placed nearly 800 guards in county facilities, filed for bankruptcy after its president and chief executive, Ousama "Sam" Karawia, 45, was charged with multiple counts of conspiracy, grand theft, making false statements and insurance fraud.

USC won its only Bowl Championship Series title four years ago, but Coach Pete Carroll still ranks No. 1 in at least one category. A new report released today says Carroll was the highest-paid private university employee in the United States during the 2006-07 fiscal year. Carroll earned $4.4 million in total compensation, four times as much as USC President Steven B. Sample, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

It wasn't so long ago that, after putting in years building up his career, Denzel Washington finally cracked the $20-million star salary club. But now he's taking a sizable pay cut to star in the upcoming 20th Century Fox film "Unstoppable" after the studio threatened to pull the plug on the picture in order to get its costs down. David Fincher used to make $8 million to $10 million per picture, along with a nice piece of first-dollar gross, as an A-list director.

In an industrial zone a few blocks off the 101 Freeway, the Tarzana Treatment Center relies on government contracts and nonprofit tax status to serve drug addicts in poverty or trouble with the law. A clerk sits behind protective glass in the lobby. Down a hallway in the detox wing, down-and-out men are curled on their cots. The coat hooks in the rooms flip down so patients can't hang themselves. It hardly seems like the headquarters of a $45-million-a-year business.

President Obama moved Wednesday to rein in the pay of executives whose companies get taxpayer bailout money -- putting a $500,000 cap on annual compensation, limiting "golden parachutes" to departing bigwigs and requiring corporate boards to adopt policies on luxury expenditures such as lavish entertainment and parties.

The campaign to clamp down on executive pay is getting an assist from an unusual source: the head of Wall Street's most powerful investment bank. Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said Tuesday that the financial industry needed a "renewal of common sense" and pay standards to "discourage selfish behavior, including excessive risk-taking."

When Anthony Colannino, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, looked at his pay stub for the last two weeks of June, he assumed there must have been a mistake: He had received only $271.98, more than $3,000 less than the county usually pays him. No mistake, Colannino was told when he queried the amount. He had been docked 11 days' pay because he had exceeded the amount of time his office would allow him to work in the California State Military Reserve.

President Barack Obama strongly condemned the state of public education Tuesday, calling for more charter schools, higher salaries for effective teachers and the faster firing of bad ones, an agenda that could put him at odds with some longtime Democratic stalwarts in teachers unions. "It's time to start rewarding good teachers, stop making excuses for bad ones," Obama told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

A battle has been roiling in the courts over whether judges in Los Angeles County are entitled to a long-standing benefits program that boosts their pay well above that of their colleagues all across California. The California Supreme Court last week refused to review an appeals court decision ruling unconstitutional more than $46,000 in benefits each judge receives from the county, opening up the possibility that judges here might be taking a steep pay cut in the near future.

The Obama administration is threatening to rescind billions of dollars in federal stimulus money if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers do not restore wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers approved in February as part of the budget. Schwarzenegger's office was advised this week by federal health officials that the wage reduction, which will save California $74 million, violates provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.