Michael Grabell is a senior editor with ProPublica. Grabell has previously written about economic issues, labor, immigration and trade. He has reported on the ground from more than 35 states, as well as some of the remotest villages in Alaska and Guatemala. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The New York Times and on Vice and NPR.
Grabell has won two George Polk awards and has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize — in 2021, as part of a team covering COVID-19, and in 2019, with Ginger Thompson and Topher Sanders, for stories that helped expose the impact of family separation at the border and abuse in immigrant children’s shelters. The latter work also won a Peabody award and was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.
He previously won the Gerald Loeb Award for business journalism for his investigation into the dismantling of workers’ compensation and an ASNE award for reporting on diversity for his series on the growth of temp work in the economy.
A bill that passed a state Senate committee today would address a problem highlighted in a ProPublica and NPR investigation of problems with new workers' compensation laws.
A proposal to nearly triple the maximum compensation for workers who lose a limb follows a ProPublica/NPR story that showed Alabama to have the lowest permanent partial disability benefits in the country.
Concern over possible misuse of a 2012 workers’ comp law has led to warnings from state labor officials. A state senate committee will hold a hearing on the law Wednesday.
A top labor official in California challenges our characterization of changes to the state’s workers’ comp system. His department will audit a case spotlighted by us.
Separate investigations into changes in the workers’ compensation system nationwide found that cutbacks were hurting injured workers and their families.
If you suffer a permanent injury on the job, you’re typically entitled to compensation for the damage to your body and your future lost wages. But depending on the state, benefits for the same body part can differ dramatically.
Each state determines its own workers’ compensation benefits, which means workers in adjoining states can end up with dramatically different compensation for identical injuries.
Over the past decade, states across the country have been unwinding a century-old compact with America’s workers: A guarantee that if you are injured on the job, your employer will pay your medical bills and enough of your wages to help you get by. In all, 33 states have passed laws that reduce benefits, create hurdles to getting medical care or make it more difficult to qualify for workers’ comp.
Over the past decade, states have slashed workers’ compensation benefits, denying injured workers help when they need it most and shifting the costs of workplace accidents to taxpayers.
Joel Ramirez was paralyzed from the waist down in 2009 when a 900-pound crate fell on him while on the job. A new #WorkersComp law in 2014 passed in California and the home health aide he relied on was taken away. This is his life now.
Despite the drumbeat of complaints about costs, employers are paying the lowest rates for workers’ compensation insurance than at any time in the past 25 years, even as the costs of health care have increased dramatically.
The NYPD has a secretive program that uses unmarked vans with X-ray machines designed to detect bombs. ProPublica tried to find out more about it, but the NYPD refused to answer for three years.
Investigations in Illinois, a new law in California, questions from a U.S. senator and increased scrutiny from OSHA follow ProPublica series on the growth of temp work.
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