News & Facts about Jobs, Workers

Cartoons about Work
Groups with Info on Jobs & Work
Info on Jobs & Workers from the Government
Information About Companies
Labor Around the World

Cartoons about Work

Dilbert
Funny insight on workplace follies, but takes a long time to load and is surrounded by commercial pitches.

Huck-Konopacki Cartoons
Two of the foremost labor cartoonists, Mike Konopacki and Gary Huck, show their stuff on this dynamic site, including animations.

Groups with Info on Jobs & Work

Association of Union Democracy
Supports democratic rights of members.

Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations
Tap into one of the most respected labor relations schools and their library to find interesting facts on labor conditions and labor relations.

Economic Policy Institute
The EPI posts valuable, timely research papers on jobs and public policy. Their weekly feature, "Reading Between the Lines," shows the subtle bias in what news reports include and what they don't.

Employment & Labor Law
Lots of useful information on the laws that govern relations with your employer and recent cases -- although we didn't think their "Top 10 Wacky Employment Cases" are all that funny.

Ergoweb
Information on ergonomics, including real and proposed standards for making jobs safer, from a small university spin-off company partly funded by the auto industry.

Ford GLOBE
Ford GLOBE is a grassroots network that has now become an officially-recognized resource group of employees, retirees and contractors at the Ford Motor Company. Its goals are to fight discrimination and misunderstanding and help maintain a safe, supportive work environment for gay, lesbian and bisexual people at Ford.

Holy Cross Student Labor Action Committee
What a delight to discover these students supporting worker rights on the web as well as on campus. It's a well-done frequently updated site to keep people informed about worldwide labor and human rights issues and campaigns.

Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations
Established in the 1950s, the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Michigan offers programs that address issues such as labor market structure, collective bargaining, union leadership development, worker health, diversity in the workplace, low-wage employment and poverty, urban economic development, and the internationalization of economic relations. Although the Institute is not a degree-granting institution, its Labor Studies Center regularly offers a range of educational conferences.

Labor Beat
This Chicago-based television program home page offers lots of videos on contemporary labor issues, plus some audio programs you can listen to as your surf. A good source for links, too.

Los Angeles RSI Support Group
Offering news about Repetitive Strain Injury, a.k.a. Cumulative Trauma Disorder, with tips about how to prevent these crippling workplace injuries to arms and hands. Also links to other RSI support groups nationwide.

LRA Online
This New-York based labor support group, the Labor Research Association, offers interesting online articles with facts and analysis of what's going on with the labor movement today, plus technical support.

Michigan State AFL-CIO
One of many state labor federations on the web, we include this one because it's a good source of news on what's happening politically in Michigan.

National Employment Law Association
Useful legal information from lawyers who represent workers against employer abuses.

New York's Lower East Side Tenement Museum
Click on a window in a tenement building, and you see a picture and story of a family who lived in that room. This museum is a rich contribution to showing the lives of many immigrant workers.

NY@Work
Substantial, creative site, mostly for workers in the New York, New Jersey area.

SweatGear: A Lucrative Blend of Old and New
"For that mean and lean look," check out this clever parody of a clothing catalogue, showing "Designer Attire from Old-Fashioned Sweatshops in El Salvador."

Temp24-7
A great place for temporary workers to let off steam and share some humor about their plight. Temps are encouraged to contribute to sections like "Temp Tales of Terror" and "Gripe of the Week." If you down load a free Shockwave program, you can even play an action-packed game called "Temps vs. Suits," enjoying elevator music as you battle the Suits with common office equipment.

Toledo, Ohio industry, labor, technology and culture
A virtual museum about the development of in the Toledo area. Includes the 1934 UAW Auto-Lite strike, which helped convince Congress of the need to pass the Wagner Act setting up labor law protections for workers.

Union Communications Service (UCS)
Tells you how to order news, graphics and features unions can reprint in their publications and otherwise use. Check out their free Weekly Labor Cartoon and Weekly Labor Song features.

Workers' Education Local 189 News & Ed Czarnecki's Labor Education Newsletter
A retired AFL-CIO Education Department staffer puts out a twice-a-month newsletter for this national group of worker educators. Includes summaries of articles of interest to unionists and workers and links to labor history sites.

Info on Jobs & Workers from the Government

Bureau of Labor Statistics
Front page takes a long time to come up, but here you can find more details on the above figures, news releases, etc.

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
Explains how mediation and arbitration work to help solve labor disputes, gives updates on disputes the agency is currently helping with, and hosts an electronic reading room.

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
This is the agency that does the research on workplace hazards; part of the Centers for Disease Control. Many research findings can be found here.

National Labor Relations Board
Lots of information about activities of the agency that's supposed to enforce labor law, including defining key terms. Here you'll find their rulings, up to a couple of weeks ago. You may need to download the Adobe Acrobat reader to read the documents, however.

Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA)
Statistics on workplace hazards, health and safety rules, and news on what the government does to prevent sickness and injury.

Quick look at key statistics on labor & jobs
Includes the latest unemployment figures, how much money the average worker makes, average hours worked, etc.

The EEOC (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity) Commission)
Explains the laws that bar discrimination, including the recent law barring bias against disabled workers, and tells you how to file a charge if you've been discriminated against.

The Federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
The federal agency that insures most workers' pensions. Includes special online list of all workers it can't find who are owed pension money.

The IRS Can Be Fun -- Really!
This whimsical "Digital Daily" is full of useful information, tax news and even cartoons as well as those painful forms we love to fill out. But since it can take forever to load, you might prefer this text-only version.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB)
An agency set up to do scientific investigations on ways to prevent chemical accidents. Their latest discoveries and chemical safety facts are online here.

U.S. Department of Labor
Takes a long time to load, but offers government information on jobs and workers and regulations.

Information About Companies

EDGAR: site of Company filings with the SEC
The SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission) uses EDGAR (the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system) to put its very useful database online with info companies have to file on their profits, executive salaries, and other revealing info. But the goodies are hidden in a cloud of technical and bureaucratic legaleze. Once you find the right company and form, you may want to download it into on your computer, so you can use the search tool of a word processing program to find what you're looking for. (For tips on how to find and calculate executive salaries and bonuses, you'll find the guide in PayWatch helpful.

Executive PayWatch
Thanks to the AFL-CIO, you can now see "a working families' guide to monitoring and curtailing the excessive salaries, bonuses and perks in CEO compensation packages." Find out what the head honcho where you work makes, and for many companies, you can also find out how long you'd have to work to make the same. It also tells you how to look up companies yourself in government online databases.

Hoover's Online
Gives you the latest quarterly earnings, "capsules" on companies that include very basic info, plus recent business news concerning them, and links to web sites for 5,000 companies. Also gives more detailed company profiles, but that's for subscribers only.

NewsPage
News by, from and about business, organized by industry and the size of the company. If you want to know what they're saying, you can probably find it here.

P.R. Newswire
A wealth of news releases, organized by category. You can find news today or over the last year, from companies or from unions (in the Washington & The World section, for some reason) and other groups. There's a special section on automotive news too.

Labor Around the World

Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union
Insights into how a major union functions in Australia, including bargaining and political action. Represents workers at many kinds of employers, including automaker Mitsubishi and auto partsmakers.

Cyber Picket Line
A British site that supports workers' union and job rights around the world with cyber campaigns, such as one supporting Russian workers after they weren't paid for months.

Free the Children
A site by and for children, created by a Canadian youngster and overseen by Kailash Satyarthi, recipient of the 1995 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights award. Its goal is to help free children from exploitative child labour and abuse, poverty, lack of education and prejudice. Has lots of info.

General Federation of Trade Unions
News & info on a British federation that includes their metalworking union as well a wide range of jobs and industries like: ceramics, bakers, musicians , writers, clothing and textiles workers, and the footwear and apparel trades, to name a few. It's slow-loading and isn't kept up to date, however.

Global March Against Child Labour
A beautiful site that's just a little too fancy for it's own good, if you don't have a fast modem. Created to show the urgency of ending child labor. Hadn't been updated for a while when we checked, but promises to be reinvigorated by future events.

Human Rights Watch
This well-respected international group fighting mistreatment of workers and other people worldwide now features a special site to fight discrimination against women in Mexico's maquiladora plants owned by American and other multinational companies.

I.G. Metall
The Union that represents 160,000 Daimler-Benz workers in Germany, now working for the new DaimlerChrysler company. Looks like a nice site, but if you don't know how to read German, that's about as far as you can get.

ICEM international labor news & cyber-campaigns
Sponsored by the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Worker's Unions, which represents some 20 million workers worldwide. The site promotes global solidarity and cyber-campaigns over issues like helping Russian workers get wages they're owed. It offers timely international labor news, a labor gallery, union networks, and more.

ICEM North American Regional Office
The North American office of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions offers info in French and English on their actions and cyber-campaigns from a North American perspective.

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
A good source of news and information on unions and worker action world-wide. For current news, go to the ICFTU ONLINE area and check out its Bulletin Boards.

International Labor Organization
The group that has, since 1919, set international standards for "the promotion of social justice and internationally recognized human and labor rights respecting the rights of workers," pressures governments to adopt those standards, and challenges abuses like child labor.

International Labor Rights Fund
Find out about the struggle for labor rights around the world, and what you can do. Includes the lowdown on child labor, how the International Monetary Fund works and how its policies affect workers,and active campaigns for worker rights.

International Metalworkers' Federation
History, news updates and a list of publications on workers and issues around the world from the international federation the UAW belongs to.

LabourNET
This British site has dynamic, interesting information from the labor movement in many countries, both official and unofficial. When we checked it had up-to-date news from the labor movement in Korea, for example.

LabourStart
Billed as where trade unionists start their day on the net, has-up-to-date union news from around the world and links to foreign labor sites.

LabourStart TV
This feature, launched Nov. 14, 2005 on the LabourStart web site, allows you to watch videos produced by and for trade union members around the world.

Metal Workers Union Volvo Gothenburg
The union of metalworkers at all Volvo companies in Gothenburg Sweden, with 10 000 members. A sister union to UAW Ford members, since Ford owns Volvo car operations. Includes information in English.

National Labor Committee
This small group's campaigns against sweatshops and child labor worldwide has forced major clothing labels like Liz Claiborne, Ralph Loren, and the Gap to change their ways, and they've taken on the worldwide employment abuses of the Disney empire.

National Union of Miners in South Africa
A union that played a tremendous role in democratizing South Africa, they were one of the first unions on the Internet.

Poptel in Britain
A one-stop site that can link you to many progressive British groups, including the major unions and the Labor Party.

Stolen Dreams
Photos show the reality of child labor, from a Harvard University Public Health professor.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions
If anything will remind you that it's a small world on the Internet, this will. Not a fancy site, but it was one of the first union sites on the web.

The IUF world wide federation
With their web site, the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) sponsors lively cyber-campaigns, such as the one against how the Dole Food Co. exploits workers, and especially children, in the Philippines and around the world. Up to date site with good explanations about what's happening, including a letter-writing campaign. Be prepared to have your computer invaded with "cookies" as you browse, however.

The Japan Institute of Labor
This "semi-governmental organization" under the Japanese Ministry of Labor offers interesting statistics on workers in Japan plus articles and other information.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa
A beautiful site from the largest metalworkers union in South Africa -- where unions did a lot to bring the nation democracy -- with close to 232 000 members. NUMSA members assemble cars and make car parts, including tires, sell and repair cars and car parts, make steel and similar products, and make goods from steel, aluminum etc.

The New World Village
A portal to the internet left sponsored by Znet. Links you to Neighborhoods of contributors' sites by theme, plus zillions of other site links, their online conference center, forums, and online university, and more.