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 "working conditions" ...
-
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
-
iLied: Exposing Mike Daisey’s Fabrications of Apple’s Supply Chain in China
This two-part investigation exposed fabrications in American monologuist Mike Daisey’s narrative about the Chinese factory workers who make Apple products, and also gave a voice to the Chinese men and women who were at the center of the international debate about factory conditions. Daisey had gained a worldwide platform as Apple’s most prominent critic; Reporter Rob Schmitz’s investigation proved that the details on which Daisey had built his compelling story were fabricated. Schmitz’s investigation aired on Marketplace and This American Life on March 16, 2012 and made international headlines, sparking a debate about journalistic truth. Schmitz’s April 2012 follow-up stories broadcast the points-of-view of actual Chinese factory workers and their employers, and helped re-shape the narrative about working conditions at Apple suppliers. Schmitz’s investigation became the most downloaded story in each program’s history. Hundreds of media organizations covered the work, sparking thousands of news articles and commentaries about the findings and the issues it raised. Online components of the work – which included podcasts, photo, and video – demonstrated the reach and longevity of multimedia storytelling; a video Schmitz shot of an iPad assembly line went viral with more than 2 million views on Youtube. The work continues to be discussed in case study format at journalism schools around the U.S., including an ethics class at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Tags: journalism; journalism education; multimedia storytelling
-
Aging Nukes
The series examines the condition of aging nuclear power plants in the United States. It's opening installment proclaims: Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them.
Tags: Nuclear Power; United States; Power Industry; Reactors;
-
Inside Amazon's Warehouse
The article investigates the working conditions of Amazon warehouses, in which workers are forced to endure inhumane treatment while facing the risk of getting fired if complaining. It exposes how a company like Amazon can wield their significant leverage over workers in bleak job market.
Tags: amazon; warehouse; pennsylvania; work; conditions;
-
Atalissa
For three decades a dozen mentally disabled men have been living together. Their living conditions were nowhere near ideal; they lived in a run-down bunkhouse and worked full-time in a turkey processing plant. They normally made about “$65 a month”, but sometimes received as “little as 40 cents an hour”. The series revealed possible “human trafficking, abuse and neglect, and financial exploitation of the mentally disabled”.
Tags: Henry's Turkey Service; US Department of Labor; health inspectors; mistreatment; West Liberty Foods; Muscatine County
-
"The Dark Side of Daries"
Rebecca Clarren takes an in-depth look at the dangerous working conditions of migrant dairy workers in the "American West." Many have been seriously injured or killed on the job, but are scared to tell their stories for fear they will be fired.
Tags: immigrant; cows; diary; farmers; milking; daries; OSHA
-
Agriprocessors and Beyond: Inside the Kosher Meat Industry
This series of articles looked inside the kosher meat industry, a quietly guarded world worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The reporting began two years ago when the Forward's Nathaniel Popper wrote about the working conditions at the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse, Agriprocessors, in Postville, Iowa, setting off a wide-ranging debate in Jewish community. The paper has continued to follow the problems at Agriprocessors and reported early in 2008 on the debate withing the kosher industry about a widely used but apparently cruel method of kosher slaughter known as shackled and hoist. Then, in the middle of the year, federal agents, citing the Forward's reporting raided the Agriprocessors' plant in Iowa. Since the raid, the Forward has followed each legal development, but has also reported on elements of the story that were being overlooked. The first such article detailed the way in which Agriprocessors had handled immigrants and unions at its Brooklyn warehouse-sparking a case that went to the Supreme Court. The next set of articles investigated the working conditions in the rest of the kosher eat industry, with particular attention paid to the labor battles at Agriprocessors' biggest competitor, Alle Processing, which had been completely ignored. The article and chart on industry-wide conditions were the first effort to systematically set down the relative size and production of the major players in the kosher meat industry. The Forward also wrote a lengthy report on the immigrant workers from Agriprocessors who had been released from prison and ordered to testify in federal court against their supervisors, but were given no means to support themselves before the hearing date. After Agriprocessors declared bankruptcy, the Forward reported on the unnoticed consequences for the town and its inhabitants, from the lowly turkeys to the local bankers.
Tags: meat processing; kosher meat; agriculture; Agriprocessors; meatpacking; immigrant workers
-
How A Long Island Nursing Home Got It's Way
"Ten Filipino nurses at a nursing home in Smithtown, Long Island were charged with endangering patients for resigning en masse to protest working conditions." Further investigation showed that U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer helped the home, which had "contributed more than $75,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee."
Tags: FOIA; senate; nursing home; medical care; Philippines; nurses; campaign contributions; Democrats; SentosaCare; politics
-
In Iowa Meat Plant, Kosher 'Jungle' Breeds Fear; Injury, Short Pay
Nathaniel Popper, reporting for the Forward (NY) investigated a Kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, where he uncovered dangerous working conditions, low pay, and anti-unionization pressures that raised questions about the ethics of the Jewish owners of the plant towards their largely immigrant workers.
Tags: Agriprocessors; Occupational Safety and Health Administration; slaughterhouse workers; Latin American immigrants; accidental amputations; Postville, Iowa; union "devils"; animal rights group; health and safety violations; Conservative Jewish synagogue movement; Kosher certification; Orthodox Judaism; immigration authorities; ethics; United Food and Commercial Workers; Father Floyd Paul Ouderkirk; Sholom Rubashkin; Caitlin Didier; Lubavitch Hasidim; Stephen Bloom; "Postville"; PETA; undocumented immigrants; Human Rights Watch; Rabbi Morris Allen; Rabbinical Council of America; Orthodox Union
-
Strains for Airport Screeners
The story revealed that federal airport screeners have the highest injury rate in the nation; injuries were causing screeners to miss about 250,000 work days a year; some of those absences led to screeners missing training, and violating a federal law requiring all checked luggage to go through bomb-detection machines. The story also found that the Transportation Security Administration had known about the injury problem for more than a year but had taken little action to improve the situation.
Tags: airports; luggage handlers; injury; Transportation Security Administration; safety conditions; Occupational Health and Safety Administration