Hillman Foundation

The Best of the Week’s News:

• Three quarters of Kroger workers are food insecure and 14% live in poverty, according to a new report. (In These Times)
   
• Self-closing door law didn’t save victims of Bronx fire. (The City)
   
• Good for labor, good for art: More museum workers are unionizing, including workers at the renowned Art Institute of Chicago. (ArtForum, Fox32)
   
• The federal courts drop survey question about workplace misconduct because too many staffers said they’d witnessed workplace misconduct. (WaPo)
   
• Here’s every Starbucks store that’s holding a union vote (Fast Company)

The Best of the Week’s News:

• Kellogg’s workers say they’ve reached a tentative deal that could get them back to work before the end of December. (Reuters)
   
• Text messages before the tornado show Amazon management as callous and disorganized. (Bloomberg) 
   
• New York City’s worker protection agency announces its first “just cause” settlement for workers who were fired from a Subway franchise for being unable to work a single shift. (Brooklyn Paper)
   
• Investigative journalists foil anti-vaxx assassination plot in Saxony. (BBC)
   
• Wayfair: How a QAnon lie about child sex trafficking and furniture ended up hurting real kids (WaPo)

The Best of the Week’s News:

• Warm feelings: Workers at three Canada Goose coat factories vote to unionize with Workers United (NYT)
   
• A deadly lead smelter promised to clean up its act, but it keeps on polluting. (Tampa Bay Times)
   
• Child laborers in Brazil risk their lives to pick açaí berries.
   
• National Labor Relations Board says Amazon interfered in Alabama union election, orders a re-vote. (Reuters)
   
• Hackers are spamming business’s receipt printers with anti-work and workplace democracy messages. (Vice)

Attention journalists, editors, and awards coordinators: 

The Sidney Hillman Foundation is now accepting nominations for the 2022 Hillman Prizes honoring excellence in investigative journalism and commentary. The deadline for entries is January 30, 2022. 

The Hillman Prizes celebrate investigative reporting and deep storytelling that highlights social or economic injustice and contributes to meaningful public policy change.

Entries will be judged on the following criteria:

• Significance of journalism in service of the common good
• Resourcefulness and courage in reporting
• Skill in relating the story
• Impact of the investigation

Prizes will be awarded in the following categories:

• Book (nonfiction)
• Newspaper Reporting (print/online)
• Magazine Reporting (print/online)
• Broadcast Journalism (story/series/documentary at least 20 minutes in total package length)
• Web Journalism (story, series or multimedia project that appeared online. May include text, photo, video, graphics)
• Opinion & Analysis Journalism (commentary and analysis in any medium)

Eligibility:

Entries must have been published/broadcast in 2021 and have been made widely available to a U.S audience. Nominated material and a cover letter can be entered here. There is no fee to enter.

Hillman Prize winners will be awarded a $5,000 honorarium and a certificate at an event to be held in-person in New York City on May 3, pandemic restrictions permitting. 

The Best of the Week’s News:

• The EPA tolerates sacrifice zones, usually in communities of color, where cancer-causing emissions are double or triple the national standard. (ProPublica)
   
• Meet the new migrant climate disaster workers. (New Yorker)
   
• “Rust” tragedy highlights safety woes as production surges in New Mexico. (LA Times)
   
• Kelloggs’ strike continues after union rejects the company’s final offer over two-tiered pay. Company admits big challenges as white collar workers try to run the plants. (Norfolk Daily News, Baking Business) 
   
• Despite huge push, Republicans fail to flip school boards. (Mother Jones)