Workers of the World on the Web

Is there anything written on child labor in the Philippines? What articles are there on women workers in South Africa? Are there any international labor conventions on part-time work? Is Mexico a party to the 1981 Occupational Safety and Health Convention? What laws protect disabled persons in the workforce in South American countries? Which countries in the world recently amended their social security laws? What is the full text of the 1994 Labour Act of China?

Answers to all of these questions and more are available from the International Labour Organization (ILO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, headquartered in Geneva. The ILO, which was created in 1919, brings together the governments, employers and workers of its 174 member countries in common action to improve social protection and conditions of life and work worldwide.

Several of the databases created by the ILO now are available either in CD-ROM or on the World Wide Web. LABORDOC and ILOLEX are two major CD-ROMs produced by the ILO that can be found in the UB Law Library.

LABORDOC, published by SilverPlatter, is a CD-ROM indexing more than 200,000 books, reports, journal articles and other documents on work-related issues around the world. Included is indexing of all ILO publications since 1965, selected documents from the United Nations and its specialized agencies, as well as documents from other international, regional and national organizations concerned with labor and employment. Topics include industrial relations, labor law, working conditions, social security, occupational safety and health, child labor, migrant workers, women and youth. Coverage of developing countries and ethnic and minority groups also is strong. The software offers a detailed thesaurus and multilingual search access (English, Spanish, French and German). The LABORDOC CD-ROM is updated quarterly and can be found near the reference desk in the Law Library.

ILOLEX on CD-ROM is a database of international labor standards containing 70,000 full-text documents. It is tri-lingual (English, French and Spanish) and each language version includes the ILO Constitution, all ILO conventions and recommendations, the reports of the Committee on Freedom of Association from 1985, comments of the Committee of Experts on the application of conventions and recommendations from 1987, reports of committees and commissions established under Articles 24 and 26 of the ILO Constitution to examine representations and complaints from 1985 and ratification lists by convention and by country. The ILOLEX CD-ROM is located in the Electronic Information Services (EIS) room in the Law Library.

The Web site of the International Labour Organization (http://www.ilo.org) offers selected portions of the LABORDOC and ILOLEX databases for searching. Click on "Information Resources," then "ILO Databases" to see a complete list of ILO databases and subsets currently available. One of the choices is NATLEX, a bibliographic database of selected national labor laws from 180 countries. Some of the laws in NATLEX are in full text.

Explore other portions of the ILO Web site for additional useful and interesting information on the ILO and work worldwide.

For assistance locating and using the CD-ROMs please see a reference librarian in the Law Library. For assistance connecting to the World Wide Web, contact the ASCIT Help Desk at 645-3542.

-Austin Booth and Nina Cascio, University Libraries