This follow-up study to "Relation Between Job Strain, Alcohol, and Ambulatory Blood Pressure" (Schnall, et al, 1992) replicates the results of the original, providing further evidence that job strain is an occupational hazard in the etiology of hypertension.

Contains a brief history of the national living wage movement, background materials such as ordinance summaries and comparisons, drafting tips, research summaries, talking points, and links to other living wage-related sites. (Please also visit for the latest on minimum wage ballot initiatives across the country.)

A seminal study providing strong evidence that even anticipation of job loss raises blood pressure. The study also finds that blood pressure is increases in men during unemployment, especially for those with more general stress and longer periods of unemployment. The findings were subsequently reinforced by later studies.

This website has been created by the Paid Family Leave Collaborative, a group of organizations committed to informing Californians of their rights under Paid Family Leave.

Seven unions and six million workers united in Change to Win in 2005 to build a new movement of working people equipped to meet the challenges of the global economy and restore the American Dream in the 21st century: a paycheck that can support a family, affordable health care, a secure retirement and dignity on the job.

The American Dream is under threat today as never before in our lifetimes. To learn more about this challenge and what working people are doing to meet it, see The American Dream Survey, our ongoing research project on the state of the American Dream.

In Michigan, as in other parts of the country, there's a growing chasm between the "haves" and the "have nots." As unemployed workers struggle to make ends meet and suffer declining health as a result, the wealthiest Americans are enjoying the spoils of our "winner-take-all" society.

This study looks at the question: How does worker health relate to the health of the economy in the new system, and what public policies will promote the health of both? The authors find a powerful positive relationship between the level of self-employment in a society and the health of its citizens—even in the face of frequent change in an economy where knowledge produces benefits. This suggests that policies encouraging entrepreneurship—even inside large corporations—may provide a cushion against job loss and promote a mutually beneficial cycle of individual health and group prosperity.

Job loss doesn't just affect individuals. It impacts families and even whole communities. Stress, uncertainty, and lost income affect children in various ways.

A seminal article linking stress and high demand / low control work to heart disease and other health problems.

The purpose of this site is to bring together, for public dissemination, information about and related to Job Strain (specifically) and Work Stress (in general).

Jobs with Justice engages workers and allies in campaigns to win justice in workplaces and in communities where working families live. JwJ was founded in 1987 with the vision of lifting up workers’ rights struggles as part of a larger campaign for economic and social justice. We believe in long-term multi-issue coalition building , grassroots base-building and organizing and strategic militant action as the foundation for building a grassroots movement, and we believe that by engaging a broad community of allies, we can win bigger victories. We reach working people through the organizations that represent them—unions, congregations, community organizations—and directly as JwJ activists. Nearly 100,000 people have signed the Jobs with Justice pledge to "Be There at least five times a year for someone else’s struggle as well as their own."

Since 1992, the Labor Project for Working Families has been partnering with unions, union members, community based organizations and other activists to promote better work and family policies and programs, including paid family leave, child care, elder care and flexible work schedules. Their efforst include: educating unions about work/family initiatives; advocating public policies for working families; and promoting innovation and partnership between unions and communities.

An excellent four-page primer on the Swedish model of social protections, prepared by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. There have been changes to the Swedish welfare state over the past two decades and, in some areas, inequality has increased. However, other social policy areas have expanded and other forms of inequality continue to steadily decline. Like the other Nordic lands, Sweden has been considerably more resistant to the ‘imperatives’ of global integration, and the article considers what we could all learn from their experiences.

How financial strain and loss of personal control lead to depression, impaired functioning, and poor health. The first author, Rick Price, is featured in Not Just a Paycheck.

Based out of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, the MPRC is dedicated to a program of prevention research on the problems of employment, economic stress, and well-being throughout the life course. MPRC seeks to extend scientific understanding of the links between conditions of employment and mental and physical health, while at the same time, expanding the policy and practice options available to both the public and private sector.

An online, grassroots movement working for mandatory paid maternity and paternity leave, open flexible work, healthcare for all kids, excellent childcare, realistic and fair wages, and healthy afterschool options for all children.

Paid sick leave gives workers an opportunity to regain their health, return to full productivity at work, and avoid spreading disease to their co-workers, all of which reduces employers’ overall absence expense. When used to care for sick children or dependent relatives, it helps recovery times and reduces job turnover of working parents.  However, new analysis of data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals the inadequacy of paid sick leave coverage: more than 59 million workers have no such leave. Even more—nearly 86 million—do not have paid sick leave to care for sick children.

This report reviews the most recently available data from a range of national and international sources on statutory requirements for paid leave and paid public holidays in 21 rich countries (16 European countries, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States). In addition to our finding that the United States is the only country in the group that does not require employers to provide paid leave, we also note that almost every other rich country has also established legal rights to paid public holidays over and above paid leave.

Take Back Your Time is a campaign to pass The Minimum Leave Protection, Family Bonding and Personal Well-Being Act of 2007. This amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act would guarantee that anyone who's worked at a job for a year would get three weeks of vacation. On the site, you can download a handbook and other resources for mobilizing around this goal.

Prepared biennially since 1988, EPI's flagship publication sums up the problems and challenges facing American working families, presenting a wide variety of data on family incomes, taxes, wages, unemployment, wealth, and poverty — data that enables the book's authors to closely examine the impact of the economy on the living standards of the American people. The State of Working America 2006/2007 is an exhaustive reference work that will be welcomed by anyone eager for a comprehensive portrait of the economic well-being of the nation.

Even as the U.S. Labor Department released figures showing that the economy lost more than half a million jobs in April, researchers made public a large study with an unsettling finding: Losing your job may make you sick.

Dead-end jobs and the high cost of college could be choking off upward mobility...

De Graaf, filmmaker, author, and national coordinator of the Take Back Your Time campaign, questions the heavy focus in the U.S. during recent decades on increasing GDP at the expense of our health and overall quality of life.