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Mike Elk

Mike Elk is an In These Times Staff Writer and a regular contributor to the labor blog Working In These Times. He can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

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A native of Pittsburgh, Mike Elk is an award winning labor journalist based in Washington, D.C. As an investigative journalist, Elk uncovered how Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics for Washington (CREW) was working in conjunction with corporate lobbyists to attack the credibility of pro-student lending reform advocates. Six weeks later, CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan accepted a job with one of the corporate lobbyists named in the article—Lanny Davis. While covering a lockout at Honeywell uranium facility in Southern Illinois, Elk uncovered how Honeywell cheated the safety tests given to scab replacement workers at a uranium facility causing multiple accidents and releases of toxic gases. Union leaders have cited Elk’s investigative reporting as being crucial to help resolving their year-long lockout.

Co-writing with Mark Ames, Elk exposed the Koch Brothers tried to coerce 50,000 employees into voting Republican by exploiting a loophole created by Citizens United that allows campaigning in the workplace. Elk won a Sidney Award for covering how corporations crafted legislation through ALEC to allow for prison labor in the United States to be paid below minimum wage to manufacture goods for large multinational corporations.

He has appeared as a commentator on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR and Democracy Now! as well as writing for The Nation, The Atlantic,  the American Prospect and worked for filmmaker Michael Moore covering the Wisconsin protests. Elk previously worked in Charleston, West Virginia for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE), a union both his father, great-uncle, and great-aunt worked for as union organizers.

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