Wisconsin State AFL-CIO
Workplace Emergency Response Planning
The Wisconsin Workplace Emergency Response Planning project is a cooperative effort of the University of Wisconsin-Extension School for Workers, the Occupational Health Section of the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Service, business, professional and union leaders and organizations to promote greater awareness of the broad range of workplace emergencies that can occur from floods, tornadoes, fires and hazardous material releases to workplace violence and bio-terrorism.
Workers Independent News Service (WIN)
A nationwide news service focusing on issues that affect the daily lives of working people and their communities. News by and about working people.
Wisconsin Labor History Society
The Wisconsin Labor History Society exists to continue the heritage developed by the state's workers and union activists. Visit this site to learn about labor history in Wisconsin, the Society's current news and events, essay contests or to become a member.
Milwaukee County Labor Council
WORT 89.9 FM Labor Radio
The Labor Radio program is a project of WORT 89.9 FM Madison Community Radio, the UW-Extension School for Workers, the South Central Federation of Labor, Madison Teachers Incorporated and the Capital Area Uni-Serve South. Tune in on Fridays at 5:30 pm in the Madison area.
Links
Union Links
The following links are part of an educational outreach by the School for Workers to assist union organizers, staff and committees. If you need additional assistance, please contact John Lund or David Nack.
Finding the business name and address : Without the complete business name and address, you may have difficulty doing additional research.
Wisconsin Service Directory: This is available in the Reference section of your local public library.
Corporate Registration Information Service . This is maintained by the Department of Financial Institutions, Corporations Division. You can research ownership, registration and history of Wisconsin and "foreign" (out of state) corporations here.
OSHA citations . Use this website to locate information about employer's OSHA citation history.
Workers compensation coverage . Use this site to find out the name of the employer's workers compensation carrier.
Browser searches . Several "meta-browsers" can simultaneously search a number of different browsers. Dogpile has been used by many unions, but Google and Yahoo! Are also popular.
Paid searches . At least two web sites will do searches for a fee, including Knowx and Hoovers .
Corporate research . This is an excellent tutorial on doing corporate research made available by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
How to read a financial statement : A free publication by Merrill-Lynch regarding the basics of reading a corporate income statement and balance sheet.
Look up lawyers. Martindale.com allows you to research lawyers and law firms.
Why people join unions: AFL-CIO web site, helpful materials
Bureau of Labor Statistics information on unionization levels
Employer Links
Unions frequently need to check out employer's finances, business plans and other developments to prepare for contract negotiations and to target employers for organizing. Here are just several useful sources of information. Researchers should also look at the National AFL-CIO Web site which has several other useful links, as well as the reference section of your local public library.
EDGAR
Maintained by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it is the primary source for all government filings on publicly-traded companies.
Hoovers
Hoover's Online covers of 2,500 companies. There is a monthly subscription fee but for free you can get a brief listing of activities, addresses, annual sales, key employees and web site address.
PR Newswire
If you want to search through company news releases, this is an excellent source. The news releases provide insight into earnings and dividend performance, personnel changes, projections, new investments, upcoming problems in a company.
Executive Paywatch
Published by the AFL-CIO reviews salary and compensation for S&P 500 CEO's
AFSCME
AFSCME's guide to employer research. This is an excellent web page with a number of sources for doing corporate research.
Government Links
National Labor Relations Board
This web site allows you to download copies of the law or excerpts from it (useful when you're briefing a case or preparing a presentation), copies of the administrative rules, including the case handling regulations. Some of the more recent decisions are now online (NLRB Volume numbers 321-328), which you can download via Adobe Acrobat. These decisions are searchable, but remember, this is not all of the NLRB decisions.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
This web site lets you search OSHA regulations on line (so you can throw away your General Industry Standards book) and print them out and you can get a citation history on any employer covered by the law. There are a number of other helpful links, such as to OSHA's library, and directories.
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
This is OSHA's research and information arm and there a number of useful links on this page; you can do searches of health hazard evaluations and other publications as well.
Bureau of Labor Statistics
The BLS is the government's labor information source. Consumer Price Index (CPI) information is most likely the number 1 use that you'll put this to, but there are a wealth of other statistics available here as well.
Federal Elections Commission
Here's how you can search out campaign contributions in recent Federal election cycles. Try it out.
State of Wisconsin Legislature's
Look up who your elected representatives are, email them and search for lots of other useful information.
State of Wisconsin Server
This is your link to most Wisconsin state agencies, including Department of Workforce Development, Department of Commerce, etc. Look up a directory of nursing homes, occupational license holders, etc.