Daniel Zwerdling of National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” wins the March Sidney Award for “Injured Nurses,” a four-part series that reveals the shockingly high rate of crippling back injuries among nurses in the face of widespread indifference by hospitals.

Nurses, nursing assistants, and orderlies suffer more disabling back injuries on the job than any other class of workers, including police officers and construction workers. Over 35,000 nursing staffers hurt their backs badly enough to miss work every year, with many sustaining permanent, disabling injuries.

Read about the making of “Injured Nurses,” in our Backstory interview. 

The Sidney Hillman Foundation announced the winners of the 2015 Canadian Hillman Prize, Wednesday. The 2015 Canadian Hillman goes to Kevin Donovan, Jesse Brown, Jayme Poisson, Emily Mathieu, and Randy Risling for “Sexual Assault and Harassment in Canada — from Jian Ghomeshi to College Campuses,” which appeared in the Toronto Star. This coverage exposed Canadian media superstar Ghomeshi as a serial abuser of women and delved into the pervasive problem of sexual violence on university campuses. 

An honorable mention goes to Kevin Rollason of the Winnipeg Free Press for telling the story of Brian Sinclair, an aboriginal man who died of a treatable infection in a hospital emergency room because the staff ignored him for hours. 

An second honorable mention goes to Kathy Tomlinson and Raj Ahluwalia of CBC News “The National” for exposing employer abuses of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program. 

Learn more about all the Canadian Hillman honorees and their outstanding work. 

The Chicago Police Department operates a “black site” on the West Side of Chicago, Spencer Ackerman reports:

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights. [Guardian]

Ackerman learned that at least one man has been found unresponsive in a Homan Square interview room and later declared dead. 

Hillman Prize- and Sidney Award-winner Steven Greenhouse talks to Micah Uetricht of In These Times about his celebrated career as a labor reporter, his retirement from the New York Times, and future of the labor beat.