Check out the stories below for examples of journalists using computer-assisted reporting to report about the workplace. These stories and others can be found at Extra! Extra! on the IRE Web site (www.ire.org/extraextra).
Keith Rogers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal used Department of Labor statistics to review compensation applications made by sick employees who once worked at six radioactive and toxic materials sites. Rogers found that the Nevada Test Site had a compensation approval rate of 6 percent, the lowest of the sites. Yet only at the Nevada site did employees work in areas that had been detonated by nuclear devices. Nearly 900 cases were denied because former employees couldn't prove beyond a 49 percent likelihood that radioactive materials contributed to their illnesses.
Randy Ludlow of The Columbus Dispatch reports on respiratory illnesses contracted by more than a quarter of the employees working in a TRW brake plant in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. He also reviews the lack of Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards to regulate practices that caused these respiratory problems. As he describes in the July-August issue of The IRE Journal, Ludlow found illness trends by using a database of TRW employee complaints from the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation. He incorporated that data with OSHA's inspection data and anecdotes gathered from dozens of interviews.
In Time magazine, Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele review how employees lost their retirement benefits when 401(k) plans tanked and pension plans were pulled out from under them. Company-sponsored pension plans are under-funded by $450 billion in the private sector and are quick to vanish when companies hit financial troubles. While 2004 reports claimed the average 401(k) is worth $61,000, the authors say that the median value was only $18,000.
Resources for workplace reporting
IRE and NICAR offer resources for journalists who are interested in using computer-assisted reporting to cover workplace issues.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspections database, available from the IRE and NICAR database library, contains more than 3 million records of OSHA inspections in all states and U.S. territories from 1972 to February 2006. The OSHA database contains a variety of information on workplace conditions and accidents, including hazardous substance accidents. Journalists can use the database to identify companies that have dangerous working conditions for employees and to examine the safety record of companies involved in breaking news.
The Database Library also offers the Wage and Hour Enforcement database kept by the U.S. Department of Labor. It shows violations and penalties related to labor laws, including the Fair Labor Standards Act, Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act. It contains records regarding more than 700,000 cases that have been closed between the 1980s and 2004. Journalists can investigate the fairness of compensation paid by employers, identify industries with frequent offenders, and check adherence to child labor laws.
In addition, IRE resources can provide guidance in using the databases to for stories. Chapter 12 of The Investigative Reporter's Handbook has a section specifically about safety and health in workplace.
In the March-April 2002 issue of Uplink, Ron Nixon explains pitfalls of OSHA data and offers some measures to overcome them. In the same issue, Stephanie Armour lists workplace data resources, along with some specific story ideas.
Tipsheets contributed by journalists are also good resources to refer to in covering workplace issues.
Barbara Clements and Daniel Wickert of The (Tacoma, Wash.) News Tribune offer advice about analyzing OSHA data and suggestions for making the data more manageable. They also provide a list on web resources regarding an OSHA project. (Tipsheet No. 2458)
Justin Pritchard of The Associated Press explains where to get information about death in the workplace and how to handle that information. (Tipsheet No. 2062)
Journalists have written a number of stories about the workplace and available from the IRE Resource Center:
David Barstow of The New York Times revealed that OSHA declined to seek prosecution in 93 percent of the cases in which it determined an employer's "willful safety violations" caused a death. The report also finds that "OSHA's reluctance to seek prosecution persisted" even when the violations caused multiple deaths, or when the victims were teenagers. (Story No. 20850)
An investigation by The (Fredericksburg, Va.) Free Lance-Star disclosed that state government agencies are among the most common violators of worker safety standards, but they never get fined. The story identifies the area's top violators in the past 25 years, including the City of Fredericksburg and the County of Stafford. (Story No. 18656)
Contact the Database Library at 573-884-7711 to order workplace data. More information about the databases is available online at www.ire.org/datalibrary/databases.
Contact the Resource Center at rescntr@ire.org or 573-882-3364 to order copies of the stories or tipsheets.