Workers

If you are a teacher in debt, there's good news and bad news. There are literally dozens of programs that could potentially help wipe out your student loans. But most of them have narrow requirements that may lock you out. Just ask Troy Dale, a high school counselor from Ellis, Kan. He and his wife have $23,000 in student loans that they've been paying down for nearly a decade. At their current rate, they'll still be paying off their student debts when their oldest child enrolls in college.

Los Angeles County bus drivers say they are regularly becoming ill - sometimes while behind the wheel - from pesticides sprayed inside their vehicles by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. At least 14 Metro drivers are pursuing workers' compensation claims, and more than 110 have signed a petition that demands a halt to the spraying, according to their attorney. Some operators are on medical leave, and a few say they have left Metro because of repeated exposure. "You can be driving your bus and get hit with the symptoms," said Frank Portillo, a 23-year coach operator who retired in March, sooner than planned, because of medical issues he believes are pesticide related.

Michele and Russell Poland's credit was shot, but they managed to buy their suburban dream home anyway. After a business bankruptcy and a home foreclosure, they turned to a rare option in this era of tightfisted banking - a subprime loan. The Polands paid nearly $10,000 in upfront fees for the privilege of securing a mortgage at 10.9% interest. And they had to raid their retirement account for a 35% down payment. Most borrowers would balk at such stiff terms. But with prices rising, the Polands wanted to snag a four-bedroom home in Temecula near top-rated schools for their 5-year-old son. By later this year, they figure, they'll be able to refinance into a standard loan.

Mariano Rivera made his major league debut in Anaheim 19 seasons ago and it didn't go well. The then-California Angels knocked him around for five runs and eight hits in 3 1/3 innings. Things got a lot better for Rivera when he moved to the bullpen, so much so that when he plays his final game at Angel Stadium on Sunday it will be among the last stops on his way to the Hall of Fame. But Rivera paused to pay tribute to others before Saturday's game, meeting quietly with 18 fans and longtime stadium workers to acknowledge their contributions to the game.

As lifeguards begin their busy summer season, the bronzed guardians of California's beaches find themselves at the unlikely center of the battle over costly public pensions. The six-figure salaries of some full-time municipal lifeguards have fueled talk radio segments and blog comments in recent weeks, with some commentators expressing surprise at the pay for those who patrol the beaches. For local government, the larger concern is over the pensions that lifeguards receive when they retire.

SACRAMENTO - The Assembly passed a proposal Thursday to hike California's minimum wage from $8 to $9.25 an hour over the next three years and require future increases to keep pace with inflation. Higher wages would "allow our families to provide for their children, pay their bills and give them dignity and respect," said Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville), the bill's author. The measure, which now goes to the Senate, was one of scores that lawmakers advanced as they raced to meet an internal deadline to keep legislation moving.

In a office decorated with Chinese art and diagrams of body parts, Dr. George Ma cares for more than 4,000 patients. Nearly three-quarters are covered by Medi-Cal, the state's public insurance program for low-income Californians, and Ma said he receives $10 a month to treat most of them. This summer, when California makes a controversial 10% cut to Medi-Cal rates, he could get paid less. Ma said he didn't go into safety net medicine for the money, but he worries that the reductions will make it even harder for his patients to get medication, medical equipment and appointments with specialists.

WASHINGTON - While much of the debate over immigration has focused on the fate of the estimated 11 million people in the U.S. without legal authorization, one of the biggest immediate impacts of the reform bill being prepared in the Senate would be a sudden, large surge in legal migration. The U.S. admits about 1 million legal immigrants per year, more than any other country. That number could jump by more than 50% over the next decade under the terms of the immigration reform bill that a bipartisan group of senators expects to unveil as early as Tuesday.

Department store chain Dillard's Inc. has agreed to pay $2 million to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing the retailer of breaking federal disability laws by requiring workers seeking sick leave to disclose private medical conditions. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said it started its investigation after a Dillard's worker in El Centro in Southern California's Imperial County alleged she was fired in 2006 for refusing to reveal her exact medical problems to a manager who would not accept her doctor's note.

A flurry of news reports, including one Thursday by my colleague Chad Terhune, has documented an unintended consequence of Obamacare: the decision by some employers to keep fewer full-time workers on the payroll or reduce the hours of near full-time workers to avoid having to provide health insurance.  There's no telling how widespread the practice is, but analysts (including those at the Congressional Budget Office ) have been predicting it since before the law was passed.

Jan Juliani was standing behind the counter of the Santa Monica College library about noon when a group of terrified, screaming students sprinted through the entrance. One was running backward, shouting: "He has a gun!" Juliani knew exactly what to do. Recalling a lesson from a recent workshop on how to respond during "active shooter" incidents, the library assistant, 34, headed for a set of double doors that led to a storage closet in the back office. Other library workers followed her. Shutting the closet door seemed to take forever because of resistance from the pneumatic closer.

SAN FRANCISCO - Officials who oversee the healthcare plans that cover San Francisco public employees this week excoriated Kaiser executives for failing to adequately explain a proposed rate increase but ultimately voted to back it. The city's public workers have seen their healthcare costs spiral while they have accepted pay cuts and furlough days at the bargaining table. In an unusual move, labor unions teamed up with San Francisco's Health Service System earlier this year to demand greater transparency from Kaiser.

As an economist, an immigrant and a scholar of the effects of immigration on the U.S. economy, I find that few pieces of legislation have engaged me more than the proposal for comprehensive immigration reform that the full Senate will take up this week. The most heated debates have been about the path to legal status for those undocumented immigrants who are already in the United States. But this bill does much more than that. It changes the rules regulating the future flow of immigrants and of non-immigrant, temporary foreign workers.

TUMEN, China - In a concrete building on the northern edge of this city across the border from North Korea, young pony-tailed women wearing hoodies sew sportswear. The building has no flashy logo or company name on the outside, only a blue-and-red flag flickering high on a nearby pole. Across the street, a dormitory sits on a weed-strewn lot. The estimated 300 women are among an unknown number of North Korean workers in China earning cash for their country's isolated economy and providing cheap labor for Chinese businesses.

Re "The Gabriel Fernandez case," Editorial, June 4 The Times' editorial on the tragic death of 8-year-old Gabriel Fernandez was notable for its sophisticated analysis of many problems in the Los Angeles County child welfare system, but also for a glaring omission. It did not discuss the fact that social workers in the county's Department of Children and Family Services have to juggle too many cases. Los Angeles County Chief Executive William Fujioka and DCFS Director Philip Browning have recognized this for years, acknowledging that the optimum caseload is 12 to 15. Yet social workers often operate with twice that number.

The nation's complicated healthcare overhaul is proving to be a surprising source of work: People are needed to explain the law's provisions to consumers. In addition to the expected demand for more nurses and doctors to treat millions of newly insured patients, the federal Affordable Care Act is feeding a cottage industry in call centers. The law, which represents the biggest expansion of health insurance in nearly half a century, has spawned a hiring blitz by the state, major health insurers and many community groups that have to decode a lot of insurance lingo in a short amount of time to an incredibly diverse population.

Most of us consume milk. We put it on cereal and add it to coffee. We give it to our children by the glassful to build up their bones. Women are encouraged to drink it throughout adulthood to maintain those bones. We select this milk from an ever-expanding range. Milk comes in whole, reduced-fat, low-fat and no-fat versions. We have organic milk and milk labeled as coming from farms that do not use hormones. But to Northern Californian dairy farmer Ron Garthwaite, these milks aren't milk at all.

SEOUL - China is quietly inviting tens of thousands of North Korean guest workers into the country in a deal that will provide a cash infusion to help prop up a teetering regime with little more to export than the drudgery of a desperately poor population. The deal, which has not been publicly announced by either Beijing or Pyongyang, would allow about 40,000 seamstresses, technicians, mechanics, construction workers and miners to work in China on industrial training visas, businesspeople and Korea analysts say. Most of the workers' earnings will go directly to the communist North Korean regime.

BEIJING - There was a loud bang, survivors said. Then the lights went out, and fire quickly engulfed a poultry plant in northeastern China, killing at least 119 workers who were trapped inside behind locked doors. The fire on Monday, perhaps the deadliest in China's poultry industry, erupted just after 6 a.m. in Jilin province's Mishazi township. Authorities said the explosion was caused by leakage in tanks of ammonia, which is used in the poultry industry as a coolant. At least 54 people were injured in the explosion and subsequent blaze.

Frightened residents and worried workers squared off Thursday in an emotional public meeting about the potential health risks posed by a battery recycler in Vernon accused of releasing dangerous levels of lead and airborne arsenic. The state Department of Toxic Substances Control suspended operations at Exide Technologies last month after The Times published articles about its arsenic emissions. The South Coast Air Quality Management District said the plant posed an elevated cancer risk to as many as 110,000 people.