Say someone calls you and they say, ”I’ve been cheated out of my wages.” Or they say, “they tell me I’m a consultant but I’m just a worker, an employee.”
Sounds like a story. But you are busy. Who has time to search? Yet you sense that this is a story that matters.
These stories do. And there’s a way to get them out to your audience.
You collect notes here and there. You develop little pieces of the puzzle. You find experts and resources and best of all, you find an expert or a government official who puts it all together for you. Within a few weeks you have a story.
That way you have no doubts about the truth of the citizen. And you are doing a public service.
Take the case of time theft or of employers who don’t pay their workers what they should get. I’ve had countless people call me over the years to talk about this. Here in Chicago, Kim Bobo, the head of the Interfaith Worker Justice, is an expert on this issue. She has recently written an excellent book that you can use as a guide to the kind of frauds workers suffer from – especially immigrant workers.
You can reach Kim at
1020 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., Chicago, IL 60660 Ph: (773) 728-8400 • Fx: (773) 728-8409
Kim Bobo testifies on wage theft
Her website is http://www.iwj.org/template/index.cfm
This story from the New York Times makes it very clear that such abuse is widespread and also that the government agency has not been protecting workers from it. Notice how the lede of the story eventually takes us to Kim and her quotes. That is the way to give weight or meaning to the story.
Here is the government report. I would call the authors of the report to ask them to remark on a situation if you think you have one that is similar.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/20090325_GAOTestimony.pdf
