Workers are pushing for improved training and safety standards to help avoid falls, electrocution and equipment failure.
Labor
Posted inMarch 2025: The Berry Pickers
Utah’s coal mines can’t find enough workers
A mine just reopened in eastern Utah, but the industry has changed.
Posted inDecember 2024: Land as Reparations
Denver rideshare drivers just launched a worker-owned co-op
A new alternative to Uber and Lyft aspires to give workers more income and more say over their working conditions.
Posted inArticles
What Nevada’s Culinary Union wants this presidential election
La Culinaria, which represents 60,000 hospitality workers in the battleground state, faces a high stakes election year.
Posted inArticles
Denver’s last slaughterhouse is on the ballot
Voters face a complicated choice between jobs, workers’ rights and animal welfare.
Posted inArticles
The Forest Service is cutting its seasonal workforce and public lands will suffer
Temporary employees warn that important work will go undone all over the country.
Posted inAugust 2024: In the Wake of the Floods
After historic floods, the safety net failed small farmers
Climate disasters are killing the largest subset of California farms. Government programs are too.
Posted inArticles
Repeal of the Chevron doctrine will have profound consequences for federal rulemaking
Climate, public lands and tribal law regulations are now likely to face legal challenges.
Posted inArticles
The American Climate Corps take flight, with most jobs based in the West
Biden’s climate jobs program will put young people to work starting this summer.
Posted inArticles
This Montana school solved its teacher shortage by opening a day care
On-site day cares are being used as a recruitment tool. Turns out, they help more than just the teachers.
Posted inArticles
Cancer is killing firefighters. So this city is going PFAS-free.
San Francisco is the first major American city to ban the substance from protective gear.
Posted inMay 2024: A River Returns
Bozeman’s boom depends on immigrants but struggles to support them
One of the nation’s fastest-growing cities relies on a vulnerable population of workers to fuel its economic explosion.
Posted inMay 2024: A River Returns
Los motivos ocultos de la prosperidad de Bozeman
El auge económico de una de las ciudades estadounidenses con mayor crecimiento depende del trabajo de un grupo vulnerable de personas.
Posted inArticles
These Washington nurses want their hospital to be more like Oregon
Nurses at PeaceHealth Southwest, in Vancouver, Washington, protest unsafe staffing and pay.
Posted inJanuary 1, 2024: January 2024
Labor unions and environmentalists are working together on the energy transition
In 2023, groups found solidarity on the climate, but work lies ahead.
Posted inArticles
New Mexico’s displaced coal miners have gotten the shaft on severance pay
The state’s just transition plans promised by the Energy Transition Act haven’t panned out for many workers.
Posted inArticles
A new film asks: how do you make art in a city you can’t afford?
‘Fantasy A Gets a Mattress’ is a dark, surreal, fun adventure that deals with themes of eviction, homelessness and disability.
Posted inArticles
Western states saw increasing poverty and lower incomes in 2022
From Alaska to Wyoming, cash assistance can pull families out of income hardships.
Posted inOctober 2, 2023: The Dark Side of the Sheepherding Industry
Los peligros del pastoreo
Trabajadores con visas H-2A sufren en su mayoría precariedad laboral mientras sostienen a la industria ovina del Oeste de EE.UU.
Posted inOctober 2, 2023: The Dark Side of the Sheepherding Industry
The dark side of America’s sheep industry
Sheepherders face wage theft, isolation, hunger and alleged abuse.