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 "growers" ...
-
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
-
Up in Smoke: The Chris Bartkowicz story"
After KUSA aired promotions for a story taking viewers inside a medical marijuana grow house, the Drug Enforcement Agency immediately raided the grower's home. Protests outside the KUSA studios followed, along with a discussion of states' rights versus federal law regarding medical marijuana.
Tags: medical marijuana; pot; DEA; states' rights; marijuana
-
Marijuana Inc.
Flying over northern California, you will see row upon row of marijuana fields. These rows are worth multi-millions and are left in plain sight. This is “evidence of a lucrative, but also increasingly violent, underground pot industry”. This industry has become a large part of that county’s economy. Many people in this industry are turning to guns as protection, robberies in search of drug stashes, and arrival of Mexican drug cartels.
Tags: Mendocino County; Emerald Triangle; narcotics; growers; pot brokers; business; trade; Federal Drug Enforcement Administration
-
Cotton Bailout: How your tax dollars turn markets upside down, prop up big growers and squeeze small farmers
"The series examined the impact of U.S. agricultural subsidies on small farmers in the United States and Africa, and investigated the buse of federal payment limits by large growers."
Tags: agriculture; AJC; Georgia; Congress; USDA; subsidy; subsidies; farming; growers; Africa; USA; United States
-
Farming the System
The series explored loopholes across the country that allow developers to get extremely low property tax rates on land under laws intended to keep working farmers and timber growers from being taxed off their property. In many states, a developer need only cut hay on a property a couple of times a year to qualify for the benefit, and many states require no proof the "farm" actually earns any money. The reporters documented millions of dollars in savings reaped by people who fully intended to develop their land, some of whom saw their taxes drop by up to 400 times fair market value.
Tags: farmland; property tax breaks; Knapp Properties Inc.; construction; development; Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; Scythe & Spade; Hertz Farm Management; landowners; property appraisal; Vortex LLC
-
Would you like decaf with your golden egg? A feud between scientists, bureaucrats and business has cost UH talent -- and BIG money
The University of Hawaii's outdated patent and copyright policies have prevented it from reaping millions in royalties and licensing fees for technologies developed in its labs, Whitney reports. The university stood to profit from two discoveries: the development in its labs of a new mouse-cloning technology, and the creation of a caffeine-free coffee plant. The two leading researchers on the mouse-cloning project, who had won outside fellowships to work on the project, were not asked to make a written assignment of patent rights to UH. After UH tried to claim the rights to the mouse-cloning technology, one of the researchers sued the university. Later, UH announced the development of caffeine-free coffee plants before such plants existed (researchers had to wait until the cloned plants bore fruit). The Wall Street Journal reported that the plants would be available to commercial growers by 2003. In the meantime, ProBio, the company licensing the technology from UH, couldn't make its payments.
Tags: University of Hawaii; technology transfer; licensing; university research; Integrated Coffee Technologies Inc.; Laith Reynolds; ICTI; decaffeinated coffee plants; ProBio; Tony Perry; Teruhiko Wakayama
-
Market grows rotten season for apples
Business Direct Weekly investigates the crisis facing Michigan apple growers. Inexpensive imported apples from China are driving down prices, and many apple farmers will find it's cheaper to destroy this year's bumper crop than to process it.
Tags: apples; "dumping"; commodities; chemicals
-
Symington Family Partner Under Suspicion
US authorities suspect a Mexican vegetable grower with business ties to the Symingtons is involved in drug trafficking.
Tags: corruption; drugs
-
No title (id: 13174)
In the fight to crackdown on illegal immigration both Bill Clinton and Bob Dole have come out for tighter border controls. Not much attention, however, has been paid to the big American industries-construction companies, nurseries and fruit growers-that rely on immigrant workers for cheap, often dangerous labor. In this article U.S. News & World Report looks at how meatpacking outfits search aggressively for employees in southern border states and hire recruiters who find workers in Mexico who will work for low wages. (Sept. 23, 1996)
Tags: Hedges Hawkins LoebIllegal in Iowa Exploitation Illegal aliens 10 pgs.
-
No title (id: 12005)
SUMMARY: Since NAFTA, Mexican growers are spraying more toxic pesticides on fruits, vegetables-and workers. The indiscriminate use of pesticides in Mexico stretches from the vegetable fields of the Calican valley to the Tobacco plantations of Nayarit.
Tags: Schrader 9 pages