Labor
What Work Is Like in the U.S.
Escaping Oklahoma: A Worker’s Story From Inside an Illegal Marijuana Operation
Menacing guards, threats at gunpoint, workers held against their will and never paid — a Chinese immigrant describes the harsh and violent conditions on an illegal pot farm. Three years after he escaped, he still lives in fear.
Jiaai Zeng Died Weeks After Starting Work at an Oklahoma Marijuana Farm. His Family Wants Answers.
Thousands of Chinese immigrant laborers suffer abuse and exploitation in a U.S. marijuana underworld dominated by Chinese mafias. A human rights advocate says: “They have not escaped the darkness of China.”
In New York, Wage Theft Violators Get Millions in Government Contracts
ProPublica and Documented identified 25 employers that, despite histories of wage theft, have received contracts worth more than a collective $500 million from city and state agencies since 2018.
Local Reporting Network
What You Need to Know If You’re Hurt While Working on a Wisconsin Dairy Farm
We spoke to lawyers, health care providers, government officials and others to help workers understand their rights if they’re injured on the job.
Featured Reporters
Impact of Our Reporting
Customer Service Company That Worked With Disney, Comcast Will Pay $2M to Workers to Settle Lawsuit Over Pay Practices
The D.C. attorney general settled with Arise Virtual Solutions for misclassifying workers as “independent contractors.” The action followed a ProPublica story that outlined the violations.
Proposed Wage Theft Legislation Would Strip Violators of Their Ability to Do Business in New York
“We did not have the data to understand the scale of the issue in New York State until the ProPublica and Documented series came out last year,” state Sen. Jessica Ramos said.
Local Reporting Network
Aprueban $8 millones para viviendas para obreros de granjas. La policía intentará cerrar las brechas lingüísticas.
Funcionarios electos del Condado Dane en Wisconsin dijeron que las reformas responden a la investigación de ProPublica sobre la muerte de un niño nicaragüense en una granja lechera en 2019.
Series
Series: Waiting on Paychecks: New York’s Rampant Wage Theft Goes Unpunished
Series: Peligro en las granjas: Los obreros en la sombra de la industria lechera
Series: America’s Dairyland: Risking Workers’ Lives for the Milk We Drink
Series: The New Sweatshop: The Secretive World of Work-At-Home Customer Service
Series: On the Line: How the Meatpacking Industry Became a Hotbed of COVID-19
Series: Trashed: Inside New York’s Deadly Private Garbage Industry
Series: Half-life: Nuke Lab Workers Getting Sick
Series: Temp Land: Lost Wages, High Injury Rates, Few Benefits
