Spencer Soper won a Sidney Award for his expose of deplorable working conditions at an Amazon warehouse complex. This week, Soper published another memorable labor story. His latest dispatch is about truck drivers who say they were fired for talking about forming a union:

Five months after it opened a new $35 million cardboard plant in Lower Macungie, Pratt Corrugated Logistics laid off most of its 18 truck drivers, telling them the company decided to contract with outside haulers instead.

But 13 drivers who lost their jobs in April allege in legal documents that their terminations came after the company found out they were talking about forming a union.

The drivers complained to the National Labor Relations Board that they were terminated due to union activities, in violation of federal laws that protect workers’ rights to form collective bargaining units.

The Morning Call interviewed eight truck drivers who were terminated, and those interviewed maintain they have reason to be suspicious of the company’s motives. [Morning Call]

Read the whole thing.

[Photo credit: visagency, Creative Commons.]

New York Times op/ed columnist Nick Kristof admires the Chicago Tribune’s investigative series on flame retardants as much as we do:

If you want a case study of everything that is wrong with money politics, this is it.

Chances are that if you’re sitting on a couch right now, it contains flame retardants. This will probably do no good if your house catches fire — although it may release toxic smoke. There is growing concern that the chemicals are hazardous, with evidence mounting of links to cancer, fetal impairment and reproductive problems.

For years, I’ve written about this type of chemical, endocrine disruptors, but The Chicago Tribune has just published a devastating investigative series called “Playing With Fire” that breaks vast new ground. It is superb journalism.

It turns out that our furniture first became full of flame retardants because of the tobacco industry, according to internal cigarette company documents examined by The Tribune. A generation ago, tobacco companies were facing growing pressure to produce fire-safe cigarettes, because so many house fires started with smoldering cigarettes. So tobacco companies mounted a surreptitious campaign for flame retardant furniture, rather than safe cigarettes, as the best way to reduce house fires. [NYT]

It’s great to see the Tribune’s work getting the high-profile recognition it deserves.

[Photo credit: abbyladybug, Creative Commons.]

This month, Graham Rayman of the Village Voice continued his hard-hitting investigation of unchecked violence at Rikers. Be advised, the photos of inmate injuries that he obtained are horrific. The Voice published these images in the hopes of shocking New Yorkers and their elected officials out of complacency regarding conditions at the prison.

In 2008, the Voice exposed a “fight club” for teen prisoners which operated with the support of guards, who used inmate-on-inmate violence to keep order. Two correctional officers went to prison for their role in the fights, know as The Program.

Rikers officials say that the Program is no more, but insiders tell Rayman a different story:

However, several sources, including current and retired investigators, say that the practice is very much still in place, which is backed up by hundreds of internal Correction Department documents obtained by the Voice.

The documents also lay bare the extreme influence that gangs, mostly Bloods, still exert on day-to-day life in the jails—particularly at the Robert N. Davoren Center, where teens are housed and where Robinson was murdered three years ago.

Documents show that inmate leaders known as “the team” control access to the phones; extort phone privileges, commissary allowances, and food from weaker inmates; and even enforce rules on where inmates can sit when watching television in the dayroom. The weakest inmates have to sit on the floor. All of this happens right under the noses of Correction officers.

Inmates at the juvenile detention center have sustained 10 broken jaws, 6 broken noses, and 3 shattered eye sockets in 2012, according to serious injury reports obtained by The Voice. The real numbers may be much higher, because not all injured inmates seek treatment in jail. Rayman estimates that over 4000 teens are injured every year at Rikers, and that the majority of those injuries are from violence.

Hillman Prize blogger Philip Turner of the Great Gray Bridge on rewarding great advocacy journalism.