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 "skilled worker" ...
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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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Investigative Report: Foreign Labor
While investigating "the system that allows companies to bring skilled foreign workers into the country on both a temporary and permanent basis," a pattern is documented of "out-of-state companies slipping through loopholes in U.S. law, allowing them to ignore protections set up to shelter American workers from unfair competition." The story also details possible national-security risks that can come from abuse of the foreign-worker system.
Tags: Immigration; foreign workers
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Workers: We Were Cheated Out of Pay. Restaurant Cleaning Company Says Pay Deductions Legal. Labor Experts Not So Sure.
This investigation found that "CanAmera, a Canadian-based company that cleans restaurants in four states and Ontario, violated a host of state and federal labor laws, including laws governing minimum wage, overtime, a day of rest and federal and tax withholdings. The company also illegally withheld money from workers' paychecks. The company hired worked with limited English skills with promises of a good job. But, in fact, the mostly Spanish speaking workers found themselves fighting for money they said was owed to them."
Tags: taxes; pay withholdings; wages; Wal-Mart
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Boon or Bonndoggle? Visa Programs hurt U.S. Workers, foster abuse
The Star investigates America's two largest worker visa programs, both designed to bring skilled workers to the US, and reports on a system riddled with fraud and abuse. McGraw also examines the issue of top US jobs--particularly in the hard sciences--going to foreign workers.
Tags: Immigrants; Labor; Visas; INS; H-1B program; Permanent Alien Certification program; Labor Department; foreign-born professionals; Mastech; foreign students; engineering; physical sciences
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The Hole Truth
Using computer-assisted reporting skills and old-fashioned surveillance, KTRK-TV's investigative unit was able to prove that the city of Houston was not fixing its streets fast enough, despite city officials claims to the contrary. While the city claimed it was fixing more than 660,000 potholes in a year, they only had 9 pothole repair trucks. In some cases KTRK-TV's surveillance teams discovered city workers dumping piles of asphalt on small dead-end streets to cover up the city's problems. Because of the investigation City Hall began its own examination of the problem, and 10 employees have been suspended or transferred.
Tags: TAPE; TRANSCRIPT; local government; public works; CAR
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Boon or Boondoggle
A Kansas City Star computer-assisted investigation found that U.S. Department of Labor programs meant to protect U.S. workers are so weak they allow employers to reject qualified American workers and hire lower-paid immigrants and that two programs have shifted at least $14 billion in wages to foreign workers since 1988, among other issues of red tape, abuse and deception that engulf immigrant programs. (July 16, 1995)
Tags: McGraw Boon or Boondoggle CAR Visa skilled workers U.S. Labor Department 5 pgs.
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Jobs in an Age of Insecurity
Time Magazine reports that "Thirty months into a recovery, Americans are realizing that the great American job is gone. In its place: a new world of work...all sorts of people who never thought they would be on the jobless lines - professional and managerial types, highly skilled technicians and long-seniority office workers - are joining laid-off factory hands in looking for jobs and not finding them.."
Tags: unemployment restructuring NAFTA underemployed retraining layoffs
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9 to Nowhere: These Six Growth Jobs are Dull, Dead-End, Sometimes Dangerous
The Wall Street Journal reports that "While American industry reaps the benefits of a new, high-technology era, it has consigned a large class of workers to a Dickensian time warp, laboring not just for meager wages but also under dehumanized and often dangerous conditions. Automation, which has liberated thousands from backbreaking drudgery, has created for others a new and insidious toil in many high-growth industries: work that is faster than ever before, subject to Orwellian control and electronic surveillance,and reduced to limited tasks that are numbingly repetitive, potentially crippling and stripped of any meaningful skills or the chance to develop them."
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No title (id: 8641)
Buffalo (N.Y.) News series looks at the American workforce and assesses the skills, education and motivation of the country's managers and workers; reports on the trend of workplace training and the numbers of workers going back to school, with management and unions promoting further education and training, April 12 - 16, 1992.
Tags: None
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No title (id: 4308)
Pittsburgh Press looks into the claim that Pittsburgh is one of the nation's ten worst cities for blacks; finds political and geographic fragmentation, aging leadership, lack of jobs for skilled workers in the city and overall economic depression put a tremendous handicap on the black community, Oct 26 - 28, 1986.
Tags: None