Blacks battled for rights before downsizings
They did the dirty, dangerous jobs nobody else wanted. They worked in coke plants where the air was foul and filthy, and at the blast furnaces where safety was always...
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Looking for a way out without leaving home
Washing dishes. Stacking boxes at a supermarket. Dead-end, penny-ante jobs. One year out of high school, Rashad Ward wants out of this kind of work and doesn't want to get...
Looking for a way out without leaving home
Washing dishes. Stacking boxes at a supermarket. Dead-end, penny-ante jobs. One year out of high school, Rashad Ward wants out of this kind of work and doesn't want to get...
Raising Gary back up will not be easy
There's not one movie theater, major retail store or major supermarket to boast about. Amid downtown Gary's abandoned buildings is a marquee at a long forgotten theater that says `Jacksons...
The Broken Heartland: Gary
COMING THIS WEEKEND: In blue-collar communities like Gary, where most of the good-paying factory jobs evaporated years ago, both young black workers and older workers with limited skills are left...
Wal-Mart, unions to push for wider health-care coverage
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and its union critics apparently have found common ground: the issue of high health costs. In a rare show of solidarity, Lee Scott, chief executive of Wal-Mart,...
Union sues treasurer over land deal
A large union for Chicagoland heavy equipment operators filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against its treasurer, Will County political power-broker Joseph Ward, alleging that he thwarted a union land purchase...
Workers making voices heard
All the years Graciela Flores has worked in grungy, low-wage factory jobs, she felt she didn't have the right to speak up, until recently. "We thought that because we are...
A hauling overhaul
Not wanting to spend $600 on two new tires, Francisco Murasaya pulled his truck behind the line of drivers waiting to have treads cut into their rigs' bald tires. But...
Bone-weary haulers raise risks on road
Hurtling down a darkened Indiana highway, Roger Kobernick pulls his 75-foot long rig into a truck stop just long enough to grab his one meal of the day, a thin...