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 "labor shortages" ...
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Parking Patients
"Parking Patients" examined the amount of time hospitals in the Memphis area were taking to assume custody of patients brought to their emergency departments by city ambulances. In hundreds of cases we found patients were spending hours strapped to ambulance stretchers, waiting inside emergency departments for hospital staff to sign off on the transfer of care. In the meantime, city paramedics were tied up waiting with the patients and unavailable to answer other emergency calls. We found dozens of cases in the last year in which the city ran out of available ambulances to answer these calls, and had to rely on private companies to fill the gap, sometimes resulting in longer response times. The fire department blamed these shortages on the practice of hospitals using paramedics as "free labor."
Tags: broadcast; hospitals; paramedics; patients; waiting; ambulances
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The Pineros Men of the Pines
This series of stories uncovered the extensive mistreatment and abuse of Latino workers who plant and thin federal and private forests. Like immigrant farm workers before them, the pineros had largely toiled in obscurity with scant recognition of their existence. This entry is the online version of a newspaper series, story # 22280.
Tags: pine workers; labor shortages; federal guest worker program; labor; U.S. Forest Service; Healthy Forests Initiative; forestry; CAR; FOIA
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The Pineros: Men of the Pines
This investigation documents the abuses of the Pineros, migrant pine workers working legally in this country under a federal guest worker program. After nine months of investigation with more than 150 interviews, and thousands of pages of FOIA documents, the Sacramento Bee unveils how these workers have been the victims of employer exploitation.
Tags: pine workers; labor shortages; federal guest worker program; U.S. Forest Service; Healthy Forests Initiative; forestry; CAR; FOIA
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Labor Movement: Shortage of Nurses Hits Hardest Where They are Needed the Most
The Wall Street Journal reports on the shortage of nurses in Ghana, Africa. "More than 500 left the country last year, most to take higher-paying jobs in wealthy countries. Nurses in Ghana, a poor country, earn about $75 a month. Last year's departures were nearly triple the 1999 total and more than double the number of nursing graduates Ghana produced in 2000." Furthermore, "the global flow of nurses, from poor to rich lands, reflects the way talent today goes to the highest bidder, regardless of national borders. This rewards talented people, of course, but adds to the problems of health-care systems in many poor nations."
Tags: nurses; medical; American Nurses Association; recruiters; hospitals; earnings; doctors; health care
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Silence in the Fields
This article examines the effects of H-2A, a government program that "was designed to allow farmers to temporarily employ foreign workers during periods of labor shortage. In reality, farmers are increasingly using H-2A to permanently replace Americans workers with a captive labor force." Mother Jones finds that "the conditions are hardly hospitable - but those who speak out can be sent straight back home."
Tags: H-2A; government; migrant workers; farming; labor
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Critical Condition: Ambulance Chain Under Siege
Flynn reveals that only "five years after establishing itself as the nation's largest 911 ambulance company, American Medical Response Inc. is fighting to save its own life - grappling with labor shortages and corporate upheaval, fending off attacks from rivals and public employee unions, and reeling from the misconduct of its own employees."
Tags: diskette; business; ambulance; American Medical Response
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No title (id: 14024)
Business Week investigates shortages in the pool of responsible, unskilled, low-wage laborers. In order to keep good low-wage earners, employers must now spend more time and money counseling employees confronting family problems, juggling workers' shifts to accommodate erratic child care, or lending workers money so that they can pay pressing bills. (Nov. 11, 1996)