The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "downsizing" ...
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The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences
Layoffs have become a fact of American life. When faced with financial issues, companies simply cut workforce, to the tune of at least 30 million adult, full-time workers having been laid off since the early 1980s. But what is the psychological effect, not only of periods of unemployment, but also of the layoff itself? Author Louis Uchitelle examines the damage to self esteem and mental health such situations cause to their victims.
Tags: Layoffs; corporate downsizing; mental health, unemployment; low self-esteem
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Property Assessment
"You're paying how much for your home and auto insurance" this article asks. "Here's your big chance to cut those premiums down to size." SmartMoney magazine looks into the various ways to downsize your insurance premiums using new technologies, and businesses that are utilizing them. The article discusses the costs and benefits of rate quote services and other web-based providers, and recommends what to watch out for.
Tags: money; insurance; premium; rate quote; online; competition
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Downsize Danger: Many Firms Cut Staff In Accounts Payable and Pay a Steep Price
The Journal reports that "cutbacks and computerization have slashed accounts-payable payrolls but also have cost companies billions of dollars in overpayment, sparked conflicts with vendors and opened the way to fraud." The story finds that computers, unlike people, can't always spot errors and fraud, but as new technologies are coming to the workplace, this might change soon.
Tags: computers; technology; labor; personnel; Niagara Mohawk Power Corp.; employees
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Slashed and Burned: Call It Dumbsizing: Why Some Companies Regret Cost-Cutting
The Journal reports that companies that choose to downsize often find that "profits are hurt, customers and suppliers lost, employees miffed." The story looks at mistakes that Kodak, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Continental Airlines and Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance have made in their efforts to save money.
Tags: marketing; technology; hiring; employment
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Making a Killing: The Business of War
This 11-part series by the International Consortium of International Journalists and the Center of Public Integrity examines the "economic conflict in the post-Cold War era and those who profit from it. Individual stories looked at how, amid the military downsizing and increasing number of small conflicts that followed the end of the Cold War, governments are turning increasingly to private military companies -- a newly coined euphemism for mercenaries -- to intervene on their behalf in war zones around the globe. Often, these companies work as proxies for national or corporate interests, whose involvement is buried under layers of secrecy. ICIJ also found that a handful of individuals and companies with connections to governments, multinational corporations, and sometimes criminal syndicates, in Europe, the Middle East and the United States, profited from these wars.Entrepreneurs selling arms and companies drilling and mining in unstable regions have prolonged the conflicts, in which up to 10 million people have died. "
Tags: Cold War; mercenaries; business; corporate interests; Middle East; Europe; war; conflict; death; military; ONLINE; cd; irewar03
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The third rail: Politics and mass transit in the Puget Sound
In his three-part story Krueger revealed how locally elected politicians overseeing the three-county transit project had added more then 1 billion dollars worth of unplanned features to the project to cater to the desires of their constituents. He found that costs for proposed light rail system had nearly doubled, even before work had begun. As a result the transit agency re-designed and downsized the project.
Tags: AUDIO TAPE; TRANSCRIPT; Transit Agency; light-rail project; revenue; Rainier Valley; CAR
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White-collar blues
Fortune reports on increasing job cuts in different industries. The story reveals that, in "the unemployemnt flu of 2001," many of the people losing their jobs are white-collar, college educated and upper middle class. Profiles of some of the new unemployed trendsetters, who lost their jobs with WorldCom, are featured in the article. It also includes layoff statistics for different sectors and big corporations, as well as advice to white-collar unemployed on how to cope with the change and to find new jobs.
Tags: Internet; dot-com; labor; free agency; WorldCom; economy; market; stocks and bonds; downsizing; management; retraining
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UAW Downsizes Its Own Company
Insight reports that "the United Auto Workers is being sued by workers who claim that the union unjustifiably fired them after taking control of a radio network and manipulating bankruptcy....A review of several thousand pages of correspondence, court filings, testimony transcripts and interviews with former United Broadcasting Network employees and management raises questions about how the UAW conducts business and treats its workers.. The cast of players in this story of alleged abuse of workers by a labor union is larger than life. The story ultimately is a tale about who gets to decide what the American people may hear and see in the media."
Tags: Media agenda-setting; litigation; unfair labor practices
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Running With The Bulls
This investigation exposes how the winner-take-all mentality of Wall Street money managers is driving the US economy, putting enormous pressure on CEO's to merge and downsize their companies, squeezing the middle class and causing widespread job loss and economic insecurity.
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After the layoff
The Chicago Tribune looks at the aftermath of a massive layoff at Sears, Roebuck and Co. Sears killed its legendary catalog and announced the closing of 230 stores, eliminating 50,000 jobs.