Joe Yerardi

Economists estimate wage theft costs workers more than $15 billion a year. Journalists at the Center for Public Integrity spent a year investigating how widespread the practice is and how effectively the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division combats this systemic problem. Now we’re makin…

Since 2011, the U.S. State Department has issued hundreds of thousands of H-2A and H-2B visas annually. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Labor has launched only hundreds of investigations each year into wage theft abuses against these workers. See the charts below for investigations launched and visas issued by year. Companies employing […]

When you’re shopping for gifts this holiday season, keep in mind that some of the outlets selling furniture, electronics and other goods may have a history of failing to pay their workers. Wage theft occurs in every industry and Public Integrity has reported about many of those this year. In 2019 alone, the U.S. Department […]

An analysis found that industries with higher percentages of foreign-born workers had higher rates of wage theft, like the cut-and-sew garment industry.

As workplace deaths and catastrophes mount, the Trump administration has scaled back safety inspections. Since the pandemic, OSHA has cut back even more.

PARADOX, Colo. — The sound of metal banging against metal broke the calm on the high mesa separating Colorado’s Paradox and Big Gypsum valleys. An old rusted headframe marked the entrance to an abandoned uranium mine that, from a distance, looked as if its workers were simply off on a lunch break. Jennifer Thurston, a […]

Eight months pregnant, the drug sales representative wore a wire for the FBI around her bulging belly as she recorded conversations with colleagues at a conference in Chicago. Her code name? Pampers. This story also appeared in NPR Her company, drugmaker Warner Chilcott, was using payments and perks to get doctors to prescribe its drugs. […]