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 "outsourcing" ...
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Wage Theft In the Fields
American farmworkers have often experienced egregious abuses, but nothing is more pervasive, nor harder to ferret out, than the wage theft that results from a practice called farm-labor contracting. Found in the fields of every handpicked crop in the country, farm-labor contractors not only provide growers with crews, but also handle wages and manage everything from verifying immigration status to providing workers' compensation. The problem is, the contractors systematically underpay the workers. “Farm labor contractors,” says writer Tracie McMillan, “give American produce growers what companies like China's Foxconn offer to Apple: a way to outsource a costly and complicated part of the business, often saving money in the process and creating a firewall between the brand and the working conditions under which its products are made.” And yet McMillan — a fellow with both the Knight-Wallace program at University of Michigan, and the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University — found that enforcement is rare: In 2008, inspectors visited only 1,499 of the more than 2 million farms nationwide; in 2011, California inspectors found just seven minimum wage violations on the state’s 86,000 farms. Fines are minimal: “It's cheaper to violate the law than to follow the law,” says one farmworker advocate. And wage theft is tedious to prove, requiring inspectors to interview workers, analyze time cards, and collect payroll records. That's why workers and their advocates in California are counting on a lawsuit brought earlier this year on behalf of two farmworkers against the contractors who hired them—as well as the growers who outsourced the work. The suit alleges that the contractors routinely undercounted the hours worked, failed to pay minimum wage or overtime, failed to provide safe or sanitary working conditions, and housed the workers in unsafe and unsanitary living quarters. The “collective action” suit—open to anyone who can prove he or she experienced the same treatment—may cover thousands of workers and deliver awards substantial enough to deter other employers from the same practices.
Tags: Labor; farms; working conditions; wage
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Outsourcing Safety: Boeing Jets Repairs in El Salvador
KIRO Team 7 investigators travel to El Salvador, uncovering a series of safety lapses at a Boeing jet maintenance facility. We found unqualified $2 an hour mechanics, the use of broken parts, failures to properly connect electrical wiring inside aircraft and the hiring of a work force that had trouble reading English-only Boeing jet repair manuals. This team of reporters also uncovered the locations of where major U.S. carriers take their jets out of the country for repair (Guadalajara, Taipei, Hong Kong, El Salvador, Beijing, Mexico City and Guatemala).
Tags: Boeing; jets; broken parts; U.S. carriers
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Flying Cheap
The February 2009 crash of Continental Flight 3407 revealed "a little-known trend in the airline industry: major airlines have outsourced more and more of their flights to obscure regional carriers." These smaller carriers operate with different safety practices with pilots that are often paid less, with less training and fewer flight hours.
Tags: airlines; aviation safety; Federal Aviation Administration; flight safety; transportation
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Shut Down and Shipped Out
The series examines the trend of factory closings in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan and finds that the closings resulted in work being shifted to other states or countries.
Tags: factory closing; jobs; manufacturing; trade agreement; outsourcing
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Lead in Dental Work
"WBNS-TV spent the past year probing into the presence of toxic lead in dental work such as crown, bridges and dentures. The team discovered a lack of state and federal regulation in the dental laboratory industry, an industry largely overlooked and unknown to the consumer until WBNS-TV broke the story in February 2008. An increasing number of laboratories outsource dental work to other companies. The FDA doesn't track the materials in foreign or domestic dental work. The lack of oversight results in patient risk.
Tags: lead poisoning; dental work; dentistry; regulations; infection; foreign production
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Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy
"The book uncovers three labor environments where modern-day enslavement or near-enslavement of immigrants has taken place on American soil." Bowe looks at outsourcing, unpaid and illegal immigrant workers, and other loopholes in the American business system.
Tags: immigrant; immigration; outsourcing; India; Kuwait; Saipan; Florida; Oklahoma; employee; employer; PepsiCo; Tropicana; John Pickle Company; clothing; factory; Gap; Target;
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The Broken Work Visa System
The American work visa system was found by BusinessWeek to be hurting American workers and undermining the strength of the American economy. The investigation contributed to a Congressional probe in the visa program, led by Senators Dick Durbin and Chuck Grassley, who are determined to pass legislation to overhaul the program and eliminate its widespread misuse.
Tags: H-1B; skilled worker; specialization; Rochester Institute of Technology; temporary visa; immigration; outsourcing;
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CR Investigates an Accident Waiting to Happen
This report found that more airlines than ever are outsourcing their major maintenance work, often to overseas facilities. This trend has several implications. The outsourcing and contracting means that workers are not screened as carefully as they were when airlines did their own maintenance. Also, flight data shows that airlines that outsource services tend to have more delays.
Tags: transportation; air travel; airports; delays; air safety
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Power to the People?
This investigation reveals how rural electric cooperatives have become unregulated monopolies that often take advantage of their unknowing members. Many cooperatives haven't elected new board members for decades, and members are not aware of destructive changes made by the governing boards. Some cooperatives even outsourced work to for-profit companies.
Tags: utilities; electricity; power companies; business; local government
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Outsourcing Justice? That's Obscene
"The Bush administration has contracted with a Christian right organization, Morality in Media, to receive citizens' complaints about online obscenity. Since the early 1960s, Morality in Media has opposed pornography of all types, including constitutionally protected material. The Justice Department, duty-bound to uphold the Constitution, is thus allying itself with an organization that holds much of today's First Amendment law in contempt."
Tags: justice; freedom of speech; obscenity; religion; separation of church and state; internet