New York Times (07/22/12) Jennifer Medina

Community leaders see the warehousing jobs available in California’s Inland Empire as an opportunity for low-skilled workers. However, some of the staffing firms the warehouses use to hire temporary employees have run afoul of labor laws. Often investigations have been stymied, says California labor commissioner Julie A. Su, because so many warehouses use staffing firms, which classify employees as temporary, even though they may work for years in the same building.

Associated Press (07/21/12)

About 460 former patients of Hays Medical Center in Kansas might have been exposed to hepatitis C by a traveling hospital technician, said the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. The technician, David Kwiatkowski, allegedly infected patients with the virus by injecting himself with anesthetic drugs and thus contaminating syringes that would later be used on patients. According to U.S. Attorney John Kacavas, Kwiatkowski is a “serial infector” who has worked in at least six states since 2007.

Dayton Daily News (Ohio) (07/22/12) Cornelius Frolik

Hiring of temporary employees accounted for about one-third of U.S. job gains in June, according to federal labor data. The U.S. staffing industry as a whole has added about 776,000 jobs since 2009, more than most industries.

“It’s generally not cost effective to try to replace a full-time worker—when a company has a full-time need—with a temporary employee, because you will have all the costs associated with the employee that the staffing firm is going to include in its bill rate,” says Richard Wahlquist, president and chief executive of the American Staffing Association. “The principal reasons companies use temporary workers are flexibility and access to talent.”