Employer-employee bonds are being tested just about everywhere these days, as companies lay off people, freeze wages and take other steps to cope with a collapsing economy.

But there are some places where the affection workers have for their workplace is particularly lacking.

Glassdoor.com, a Web site where employees can post information about their employer anonymously, recently compiled a list of least-loved companies based on employee ratings.

Anonymous ratings by employees always should be viewed with some skepticism. But Glassdoor.com’s list of the 50 employers with the lowest employee satisfaction ratings includes some names already known for questionable workplace cultures. Among them is Circuit City, which my editor, John Hollon, has blasted for axing experienced workers in a cost-cutting frenzy.

Far worse than Circuit City, according to the Glassdoor.com report, is United Airlines, which ranked as the company with the second-lowest level of employee satisfaction. This performance by United dovetails with the uneven customer service I just experienced on United over the holidays.

And it is in keeping with the way United finished 17th out of 19 airlines in terms of complaints per 100,000 enplanements during October.

Some of the winners (losers?) on the list were firms that had not come on my radar screen previously as either a good or bad employer. They include transportation services outfit DHL Express—ranked as lowest in customer satisfaction—and retailers RadioShack and Office Depot.

One particularly surprising name was eBay. After all, the online auction giant ranked 68th on Fortune’s 2008 Best Companies to Work For list. On the other hand, eBay in October announced plans to cut its global workforce by about 10 percent, affecting about 1,000 employees in addition to several hundred temporary workers.

One Glassdoor.com reviewer said of the firm, “eBay attracts a lot of great people, then the company culture beats them down and they leave within a couple of years.”

Firms on Glassdoor.com’s list would be wise to take the ranking seriously—even just to realize that it raises concerns about their reputations.

And for those of us at employers not on the list, the ranking of the least-liked places offers a kind of cheap schadenfreude. Even if things aren’t great at our companies in these dark days, we can take some solace that things seem to be worse somewhere else.