Workers

The Hotel Bel-Air, a storied Mission-style landmark frequented by Hollywood's elite, will close for nearly two years for a multimillion-dollar face lift that will put hundreds of staffers out of work. The massive renovation, beginning Oct. 1, will include upgrades for all 91 rooms and suites, the hotel's Champagne Bar, its restaurant and private dining rooms. When it is finished in mid-2011, the hotel will boast 12 new villas and a spa with seven treatment rooms.

Frank Gruber's workstation at AOL in Dulles, Va., could be in any cubicle farm from here to Bangalore -- pushpin board for reminders, computer on Formica desk, stifling fluorescent lighting. It's so drab, there's nothing more to say about it, which is why the odds of finding Gruber there are slim. Instead, Gruber often works at the Tryst coffeehouse in the Adams Morgan neighborhood here, at Liberty Tavern in nearby suburban Clarendon, Va.

The Inland Empire has become a new battleground for unions looking to organize warehouse workers and broaden labor's clout in international trade, a $300-billion industry in the Southland. The fledgling movement is backed by a coalition of unions with more than 6 million members known as Change to Win.

Sun Danyong was the mild-mannered son of a potato-farming family in an impoverished corner of south-central China. When he was offered a job at a sprawling electronics factory in the boomtown of Shenzhen last year, he accepted, figuring the experience would spur him to better opportunities one day back in his home province of Yunnan. He never got the chance.

Orange County Fair officials put out a memo last weekend informing employees that a worker had contracted swine flu, stirring talk among some staffers that fair officials may not be doing all that they could to protect them. The unidentified employee who contracted the H1N1 flu was a part-time "parking lead" -- "more of an office employee" who worked Saturday and Sunday morning shifts, said Robin Wachner, a spokeswoman for the fair.

His hair thinning and his days long, Shazly Sawy is Egypt's everyman. "I'm the oldest worker in my factory," said the 36-year-old father with a raisin-brown callus on his forehead from years of prostrating in prayer. "I make 900 pounds [$163] a month. My rent is 500 pounds. I have medical and family bills. That eats my paycheck. The only way I can survive is borrowing money from my father." Sawy led a recent strike of fertilizer workers who camped for 20 days at a factory mosque in Suez before police pressure and promises from management ended the standoff.

California's powerful insurance lobby has quietly scuttled an effort to combat fraudulent medical billing that drains hundreds of millions of dollars from the state's workers' compensation insurance system. At issue was a proposal aimed at preventing billing scams backed by a task force of public and private employers, including Los Angeles County and Walt Disney Co. It would have required insurers to send notices to injured workers to check whether they actually received all medical services billed.

The fishing boats and hiking trails offer a welcome respite for countless visitors at the Wagon Trail Resort along Lake Michigan. This summer, however, the getaway has also become a lifeline for casualties of the economy who are about to go under. A factory worker once employed by General Motors awakens before dawn to oversee an assembly line of pastries in the bakery. A husband and wife who lost their business and home now staff the buffet and reception desk. Throughout the region, employers and job-placement officials have reported a rush of applications from American workers who are interested in hard-to-fill seasonal jobs, many of which traditionally go to foreign students.

The nation's unemployment rate edged closer to double digits in September but only began to reflect the miserable reality confronting America's workforce. The government reported Friday that the jobless rate rose to a 26-year high of 9.8%, up from 9.7% in August. The rate's latest move up came as employers cut their payrolls by 263,000 jobs, far more than analysts had expected, raising fresh concerns about the economy's ability to sustain its budding recovery. And those figures tell only part of the story.

This week, unemployment among American workers climbed to its highest level in a quarter of a century. In parts of Los Angeles, joblessness has reached levels unmatched since the Depression. In many predominantly African American and Latino neighborhoods, nearly one in four people is out of work. Yet the Obama administration has chosen this moment to deprive more than 1,800 Angelenos, nearly all Latino immigrants, of jobs that not only pay a living wage but provide health insurance and other benefits.