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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina s congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Myorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Study Finds Chicago Cab Drivers “Driven into Poverty"

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Friday, March 27, 2009   

Chicago – A new study finds long hours and little pay are putting Chicago taxi drivers near the margins of economic failure. The report, Driven into Poverty, finds most earn as little as $4 an hour, forcing many to work an 80-hour week.

Michael McConnell, regional director for the American Friends Service Committee, says the taxi industry has become a "sweat shop" on wheels.

"If a factory owner in Chicago kept their workers for 13 hours a day and paid them $4.38 an hour, the international human rights community and the people of Chicago would call that a sweat shop."

Taxi drivers serve as ambassadors of the city, says McConnell, providing a vital service for business and convention centers.

"Without a thriving taxi industry, this city would probably not have the visitors, and therefore the economic income from those visitors that it has today."

The chair of the United Taxidrivers Community Council, Fayez Khozindar, says cab drivers deserve fair living conditions and fair wages.

"Drivers are really deprived of sleep, deprived of health, deprived of decent treatment. Drivers are humans and they are not slaves and they are treated like dirt and this is not acceptable."

Advocates say conditions could be improved with reforms such as centralized dispatching and regularized fare increases. The study calls for the creation of a blue ribbon commission to make recommendations on how taxi drivers can make minimum wages by the end of this year.

The full report is available at www.afsc.org/chicago.




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