August 31, 2012 The Pump Handle 1Comment

It’s Tuesday evening and as usual, the small parking lot outside the Workers Defense Project on Austin’s eastside is packed. The dusty lot is strewn with cars and pick-up trucks parked wherever they can fit and get in off the road. I’ve arrived well before the night’s activities begin, so I easily secure a spot. But my gracious guide and translator, a college intern named Alan Garcia, warns me that I might get blocked in. It happens all the time, he says.

August 27, 2012 The Pump Handle

For six months, Jorge Rubio worked at a local chain of tortilla bakeries and taquerias in the cities of Brownsville and San Benito, both in the very southern tip of Texas. Rubio, 42, prepared the food, cleaned equipment, served customers. Eventually, he decided to quit after being overworked for months. On his last day of work, his employer refused to pay him the usual $50 for an 11-hour workday.

August 23, 2012 Liz Borkowski, MPH

A News & Observer series on employers who break workers’ compensation laws spurs a promise of action from North Carolina’s governor; safety initiatives address hazards in Northeast fisheries; and seven former General Motors workers sew their mouths shut as part of a hunger strike over the company’s treatment of workers.

August 21, 2012 The Pump Handle

The newly unveiled granite memorial in Whitesville, WV is a visible reminder of the 29 miners who were killed in the Upper Big Branch mine, but the truest measure of our recognition of their sacrifice is what we do in their memory to protect the living.