The internet is generally regarded as a democratic medium, a marketplace of information open to anyone with a mouse and a modem. It is surprising, then, that sites about the effects on health of organisational downsizing—the subject of a paper in this week's BMJ (p 555)—seem stacked more in employers' than in employees' favour. While there are several papers available online showing that downsizing can adversely affect health—search “the world's largest online library” (www.questia.com) or PubMed Central (www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/) for these—campaigning sites seem scarce. Instead, searching on www.google.com brings up links sponsored by companies offering occupational health services to businesses to help them, for example, reduce cost of sickness absence or “rehabilitate” stressed or absent employees (www.healthmanltd.com/ and www.matrix-ms.com/).
However, there are some interesting online initiatives. Timesizing.com is a US-based site that campaigns to downsize the working week rather than the workforce (www.timesizing.com). Its philosophy is that if hours are cut a little for everyone, everyone stays employed. It is an intriguing and impressively constructed site that claims to offer the world's first dotcom political party (the man behind the site stood to be a Massachusetts senator in 2000).
The Job Stress Network (www.workhealth.org/), the home page of the California-based Center for Social Epidemiology, brings together information about job strain and work stress, including downsizing.
General information about employees' health can be found on the sites of various associations of occupational health doctors, but few of these have anything specific on downsizing. However, the internet demonstrates how international an issue occupational health has become with countries linking up to share not only information but also web space. The Baltic Sea Network on Occupational Health and Safety (www.balticseaosh.net/index.shtml) is made up of the occupational health and safety institutions of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, north west Russia, Norway, Poland, and Sweden. While its site contains only two references to downsizing, it is an impressive collection of general occupational health resources, with a useful links page.