Businesses in North Carolina with three or more employees are required by law to purchase workers’ compensation insurance if they can’t cover the cost of employees’ injuries outright. But, News & Observer reporter Mandy Locke discovered this law is seldom enforced and that thousands of employees are put at risk everyday on the job. This month, hundreds of business owners have been summoned to hearings and told to pay their injured workers or face jail time. Locke joins host Frank Stasio to talk about how so many workers’ comp claims slipped through the cracks in North Carolina and how her reporting encouraged the state to take more aggressive measures to resolve these disputes.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.