workers

This year, for the seventh time in the past decade, Walmart is No. 1 on the Fortune 500. But how big is it? The numbers listed for largest American company are too immense to grasp in the abstract, so we've found some comparisons to put them on a more comprehensible human scale.

Are taxpayers "footing the bill for these federal employees while watching their own salaries remain flat and their benefits erode," as Florida representative Dennis Ross stated in discussion over a Republican call to get federal employee pay in line with private-sector pay? Or are they, as...

A century after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire claimed the lives of 146 seamstresses in New York, worker protections are eroding around the world. As government and corporate interests from Bangladesh to Wisconsin wage war on the rights of labor, have the lessons of the Triangle disaster been forgotten?

The Republicans are winning this year's budget battle: Discretionary spending will decrease. But this is hardly the time for the GOP to take a victory lap: Next, the GOP will have to lower unemployment and improve the average American's daily life -- two areas where the party has historically come up short.

Everyone knows that the typical American household has been running in place or falling behind financially, thanks to stagnant wages and rising prices. But a new study from the the Economic Policy Institute shows that the problem has been endemic not for years, but for decades.

During the past three decades, businesses of all sizes have shifted away from traditional defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution plans, also known as 401(k)s. Now, states and local governments are doing the same, even though many workers lack the necessary investing savvy.

Since the 1930s, when the National Labor Relations Board was established, no state has ever sought to prohibit workers from organizing. But in Wisconsin, collective-bargaining rights are under "assault," in President Obama's words. And other states are watching.

Veterans with disabilities have a staggering 41% unemployment rate. That's especially true for veterans who return from Iraq and Afghanistan with two signature disabilities: post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, which frequently go undiagnosed.

It's hard to fathom that something as mundane as weather could affect employment statistics. But it clearly does. And it also has big impact on how much work actually gets done. And beyond the snows of winter, there's distractions like the Super Bowl that keep worker from their duties.

Some 3,000 workers at Ford Motor's (F) truck plant in Dearborn, Mich., have been idled because of a shortage of parts needed to manufacture engines installed in the company's popular line of pickup trucks. The workers will be on temporary layoff for about a week, The Detroit News reported. The...