Problem with TableSorter

Problem with TableSorter

I am using the tablesorter plugin and am experiencing the following problem:

Under several scenarios the up/down arrow icons will overlap with the text in a column's header. This occurs if the browser is resized so the table width is too narrow (e.g. plugin should force a min-width perhaps?). 

More importantly, this will also occur when the text in a columns header is shorter than any of the values in the column the up/down icons overlap with the text in the column header.   

I've attempted setting padding on the header columns but no success (probably because the up/down icons are set as background images and therefore have no impact on padding)

At the moment the plugin won't be usable for me since the arrorws overlap with the text in several columns.

any suggestions would be much appreciated.