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 "living conditions" ...
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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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No. 9: The 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster
The 1968 Farmington Coal Mine Disaster prompted Congress to pass the 1969 Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, the first law to set meaningful underground safety standards and fines for violations. Despite the importance of the tragedy, which took the lives of 78 men, neither federal nor the state government determined the cause of the disaster. The state did not produce a final report as was required by West Virginia law, and the federal government did not make public its final, inconclusive report until 1990. This book pieces the story together, documenting the dangerous conditions that plagued the No. 9 from 1935 through the first deadly disaster in 1954 that killed 16 men and up to the 1968 tragedy.
Tags: farmington coal mine; virginia; united states; safety; coal
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Troubled Landlords
For at least a decade, Twin Cities landlords Hyder Jaweed and Asgher Ali ran a rental property empire that left hundreds of tenants -- most often low income and/or immigrants -- living in squalid conditions and left city inspectors wishing there were laws to stop the landlords.
Tags: landlords; housing; inspectors; renters
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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
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Prison Cover-UP
Hurrican Rita was on her way. But prisoners in the federal penitentiary in Beaumont were not evacuated and lived in some horrendous conditions. Prison officials lied to prisoners' relatives and the news media, first by saying prisoners had been moved to safer quarters and then by saying conditions inside the prison were fine. The prisoners' accounts were later verified by prison guards.
Tags: prison; inmate abuse; hurricane rita; inmates in jeopardy; poor treatment; negligence
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Beneath the Neon
The book follows Matthew O'Brien as he explores Las Vegas' underground flood control system for more than four years. Among his discoveries, O'Brien details access into casinos and airports and describes the people he found living in the tunnels.
Tags: Las Vegas; flood control system; tunnels; homeless; gambling; unsafe conditions; public safety;
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TYC Abuse Scandal
"This rolling investigation documents the sexual and physical abuse of teenaged inmates at het prisons operated by the Texas Youth Commissions, the state's juvenile justice agency. It reveals abuse, filthy living conditions, lax medical care, inept and uncaring administrators, troubled contractors, questionable business dealings and a brutal climate of fear and retaliation."
Tags: juvenile prisons; juvenile justice; abuse; sexual abuse; inmates; Texas Youth Commission
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Abandoning Our Mentally Ill
A year-long investigation of living conditions of the most severely mentally ill patients in the Milwaukee area discovered that those conditions were far from ideal, sometimes filthy and dangerous. Among the discoveries were patients housed in illegal group homes which city building inspectors did not discover or report. In addition, caseworkers were still placing patients in homes despite knowledge of their poor and filthy conditions. At the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex, a 33-year-old woman died from dehydration and starvation after doctors allowed her to go nearly four weeks without food or water. Social service and government agencies had also passed up opportunities to accept federal money for construction of better facilities, $3.3 million in the past seven years.
Tags: Mental illness; Department of Housing and Urban Development; Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex
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If These Walls Could Talk
Rental property in two neighborhoods heavily populated by University of Minnesota students were found to have faulty plumbing repairs, a lack of or broken smoke detectors, handrails missing in the interior, and illegal wiring. Reports were kept over three time periods since 2001 to check the safety of the properties because of a house fire that killed University of Minnesota students.
Tags: rental; safety; living conditions; student housing; IRE Student Entry
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The Dorm from Hell
This investigative report exposes the terrible conditions of a dorm on the University of Texas at Dallas campus. The dorm is riddled with health and safety concerns and is not safe for students to live in.
Tags: university; health; students; college; housing