Inside LabourStart

Some highlights:

• Mailing lists growing quickly (100 or more new subscribers this month) include English, French, and Chinese.
• Big growth on social networks (100 or more new ones this month) are our Facebook page and group in English and our Twitter feed in English.

The numbers in brackets are for the previous month. Strong gains are highlighted in bold.

Mailing lists

English: 78,105 [76,648]
French: 6,044 [5,868]
Spanish: 4,535 [4,462]
Italian: 3,914 [3,888]
Turkish: 3,208 [3,116]
German: 2,847 [2,798]
Norwegian: 2,390 [2,369]
Russian: 1,922 [1,951]
Dutch: 882 [885]
Chinese: 817 [717]
Finnish: 536 [548]
Polish: 314 [318]
Arabic: 299 [267]
Japanese: 262 [240]
Portuguese: 242 [246]
Tagalog: 228 [205]
Farsi: 213 [207]
Hebrew: 211 [209]
Swedish: 179 [183]
Korean 154 [150]
Danish: 144 [144]
Indonesian: 126 [116]
Czech: 89 [96]

Social networks

Twitter followers -
English: 9,177 [8,881]

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 6,596 [6,387]
Members of LabourStart group: 5,102 [4,925]
Like LabourStart page (French): 305 [294]
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 102 [96]
Like LabourStart page (Hebrew): 70 [0] – new page launched this month

UnionBook –
Members: 5,507 [5,481]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 1,272 [1,233]

Union group on Flickr: 721 [720]

Website

Correspondents: 633 [624]

The numbers in brackets are for the previous month. Strong gains are highlighted in bold.

Mailing lists

English: 76,648 [76,322]
French: 5,868 [5,893]
Spanish: 4,462 [4,504]
Italian: 3,888 [3,888]
Turkish: 3,116 [3,116]
German: 2,798 [2,614]
Norwegian: 2,369 [2,369]
Russian: 1,951 [1,951]
Dutch: 885 [885]
Chinese: 717 [716]
Finnish: 548 [546]
Polish: 318 [318]
Arabic: 267 [252]
Portuguese: 246 [246]
Japanese: 240 [240]
Hebrew: 209 [208]
Farsi: 207 [207]
Tagalog: 205 [205]
Swedish: 183 [183]
Korean 150 [150]
Danish: 144 [144]
Indonesian : 116 [109]
Czech: 96 [96]

Social networks

Twitter followers -
English: 8,881 [8,659]

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 6,387 [6,327]
Members of LabourStart group: 4,925 [4,909]
Like LabourStart page (French): 294 [279]
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 96 [92]

UnionBook –
Members: 5,481 [5,440]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 1,233 [1,194]

Union group on Flickr: 720 [720]

Website

Correspondents: 624 [613]

The numbers in brackets are for the previous month. Strong gains are highlighted in bold.

Mailing lists

English: 76,322 [75,280]
French: 5,893 [5,922]
Spanish: 4,504 [4,392]
Italian: 3,888 [3,889]
Turkish: 3,116 [3,106]
German: 2,614 [2,586]
Norwegian: 2,369 [2,344]
Russian: 1,951 [1,935]
Dutch: 885 [803]
Chinese: 716 [708]
Finnish: 546 [187]
Polish: 318 [312]
Arabic: 252 [231]
Portuguese: 246 [243]
Japanese: 240 [230]
Hebrew: 208 [208]
Farsi: 207 [206]
Tagalog: 205
Swedish: 183 [183]
Korean 150 [143]
Danish: 144 [144]
Indonesian : 109
Czech: 96

Social networks

Twitter followers -
English: 8,659 [8,441]

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 6,327 [6,098]
Members of LabourStart group: 4,909 [4,884]
Like LabourStart page (French): 279 [267]
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 92 [87]

UnionBook –
Members: 5,440 [5,417]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 1,194 [1,153 ]

Union group on Flickr: 720 [719]

Website

Correspondents: 613 [741]

The numbers in brackets are for the previous month. Strong gains are highlighted in bold.

Key developments:

• We’ve moved from MailChimp to Sendy for nearly all our lists now.
• We now have 28 mailing list languages.
• 20 of those lists have 100 or more subscribers.  We are currently mailing to all 20 of those lists.
• The 8 small lists are Indonesian, Czech, Esperanto, Bulgarian, Greek, Creole, Vietnamese and Tagalog.
• The number of correspondents has dropped dramatically (308 so far) as we get rid of the completely inactive ones.

Mailing lists

Total for all lists: 103,324 [104,515]

1. English: 75,280 [75,213]
2. French: 5,922 [5,932]
3. Spanish: 4,392 [4,356]
4. Italian: 3,889 [3,879]
5. Turkish: 3,106 [3,111]
6. German: 2,586 [2,551]
7. Norwegian: 2,344 [2,333]
8. Russian: 1,935 [1,949]
9. Dutch: 803 [781]
10. Chinese: 708 [629]
11. Polish: 312 [310]
12. Portuguese: 243 [243]
13. Arabic: 231 [184]
14. Japanese: 230 [ 209]
15. Hebrew: 208 [208]
16. Farsi: 206 [201]
17. Finnish: 187 [186]
18. Swedish: 183 [185]
19. Danish: 144 [146]
20. Korean 143 [93]

Social networks

UnionBook –
Members: 5,417 [5,389]

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 6,098 [5,877]
Members of LabourStart group: 4,884 [4,849]
Like LabourStart page (French): 267 [245]
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 87 [74]

Twitter followers -
English: 8,441 [8,115]

Union group on Flickr: 719 [718]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 1,153 [1,114]

Website

Correspondents: 741 [1,049]
Site visits: 597,018 [599,459]

The numbers in brackets are for the previous month. Strong gains are highlighted in bold.

Mailing lists
Total for all lists: 104,515 [104,764]

English: 75,213 [75,686]
French: 5,932 [5,857]
Spanish: 4,356 [4,337]
Italian: 3,879 [3,879]
Turkish: 3,111 [3,112]
German: 2,551 [2,549]
Norwegian: 2,333 [2,328]
Russian: 1,949 [1,948]
Dutch: 781 [740]
Chinese: 629 [553]
Polish: 310 [310]
Portuguese: 243 [243]
Japanese: 209 [ 209]
Hebrew: 208 [207]
Farsi: 201 [201]
Finnish: 186 [186]
Swedish: 185 [186]
Arabic: 184 [183]
Danish: 146 [146]

And just below the radar:

Korean 93 [93]
Indonesian 84 [81]

Social networks

UnionBook –
Members: 5,389 [5,371]

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 5,877 [5,715]
Members of LabourStart group: 4,849 [4,824]
Like LabourStart page (French): 245 [240]
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 74 [72]

Twitter followers -
English: 8,115 [7,921]

Union group on Flickr: 718 [712]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 1,114 [1,100]

Website

Correspondents: 1,049 [1,043]
Site visits: 599,459

The mailing lists grew by a net total of 587, which is not bad. The three largest growths were English (up by 292), French (up 48) and Hebrew (up 18 – a gain of 10%).

Our Facebook page also shot up by 261 new likes this month, a gain of 5%. The Facebook page is growing 7 times as fast as the Facebook group, and today has nearly 1,000 more members.

The largest gain, however, was the growth in followers on Twitter – up by 318 in the last month, and now just under 8,000.

Mailing lists

Total for all lists: 104,764 [104,177] +587

English: 75,686 [75,394] +292
French: 5,857 [5,809] +48
Spanish: 4,337 [4,329] +8
Italian: 3,879 [3,884]
Turkish: 3,112 [3,111] +1
German: 2,549 [2,538] +11
Norwegian: 2,328 [2,329]
Russian: 1,948 [1,949]
Dutch: 740 [740]
Chinese: 553 [551] +2
Polish: 310 [310]
Portuguese: 243 [244] +1
Japanese: 209 [ 209]
Hebrew: 207 [189] +18
Farsi: 201 [201]
Finnish: 186 [184] +2
Swedish: 186 [186]
Arabic: 183 [177] +6
Danish: 146 [146]

And just below the radar:

Korean 93 [93]
Indonesian 81 [76] +5

Social networks

UnionBook –
Members: 5,371 [5,342] +29

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 5,715 [5,454] +261
Members of LabourStart group: 4,824 [4,787] +37
Like LabourStart page (French): 240 [237] +3
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 72 [71] +1

Twitter followers -
English: 7,921 [7,603] +318

Union group on Flickr: 712 [709] +3

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 1,100 [1,054] +46

Website

Correspondents: 1,043 [1,042]

Growth was slow this month – though the previous figures are from only 3 weeks ago.  Nevertheless we’re seeing a shrinking of most of our larger mailing lists (as bad addresses are routinely dropped).  What would grow us now is a very large campaign …

Mailing lists

Total for all lists: 104,177 [104,296]

English: 75,394 [75,597]
French: 5,809 [5,813]
Spanish: 4,329 [4,338]
Italian: 3,884 [3,872]
Turkish: 3,111 [3,114]
German: 2,538 [2,546]
Norwegian: 2,329 [2,344]
Russian: 1,949 [1,950]
Dutch: 740 [739]
Chinese: 551 [503]
Polish: 310 [308]
Portuguese: 244 [244]
Japanese: 209 [ 209]
Farsi: 201 [201]
Hebrew: 189 [189]
Swedish: 186 [187]
Finnish: 184 [184]
Arabic: 177 [169]
Danish: 146 [150]

And just below the radar:

Korean 93 [93]
Indonesian 76 [74]

Social networks

UnionBook –
Members: 5,342 [5,322]

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 5,454 [5,289]
Members of LabourStart group: 4,787 [4,778]
Like LabourStart page (French): 237 [234]
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 71 [67]

Twitter followers -
English: 7,603 [7,418]

Union group on Flickr: 709 [701]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 1,054 [1,037]

Website

Correspondents: 1,042 [1,028]

Global Solidarity Conference: I had five individual calls with Australians last week, one each day.  I spoke with 4 members of the organizing committee plus Peter Lewis from Essential Media. We took a decision to make this a free conference and to drastically streamline the registration procedure. As a result, we’ve jumped from 5 Australians attending to 33, and a total of just under 50 registrants. We expect many more in the days to come as we finalize the conference agenda and begin to highlight who the guest speakers from overseas will be. I’ve begun weekly mailings the complete Australia / New Zealand list (just under 6,000 addresses) and to all those who’ve registered. In addition, I’ve been doing daily mailings to the 25 or so people on the organizing committee list.  We have less than 35 days to go …

Interns: Today is interview day; I will be interviewing all 4 of the shortlisted candidates as well as giving them a written assignment.

Office: Now largely unpacked, office is looking like a place one can actually work in.

Campaigns: I closed down the RMT campaign. I sent off the biweekly message to all our partners updating them on the status of all campaigns and asking for their help. I also did the monthly reminder to all translators about what they may have missed. I cleared the backlog of translated campaigns and mass mailings. There was a problem with campaign ID numbers, which someone managed to reset to 0, but I fixed this. I also made a small techie change – we had a problem if someone chose to opt out from the mailing list signup in that they wouldn’t be included in the count; this is now fixed. We have been asked to help UNI promote a campaign in support of ING workers in Korea and will do so this week.

UnionBook: The link to UnionJobs, which showed the most recent jobs, has broken so I’ve changed it and moved it to a more prominent location.

Publicity: I and two volunteers distributed 400 LabourStart brochures at the 20 October TUC march and rally in London. This is the first time we have intervened in this way and it went well.

Hebrew edition: My message – in Hebrew – to our list got us one new correspondent. I’ve continued to push our Israeli correspondents to be more involved and to try to feature more news from Palestine and other countries.

This is 10 days late because I was away during the first week of October. There are no website stats this time because I wasn’t able to access them this morning and didn’t want to delay publication of this report any further.

Some highlights:

Net growth of mailing lists is still strong, with over 2,500 new subscribers this month. The biggest gain was the English list, which picked up a net gain of over 2,000. I’m now listing Indonesian at the bottom as we’re doing regular mailings to this small list, and running regular campaigns in Indonesian now.

On Facebook, likes to our page continue to grow considerably faster than membership in our group, which is what we want. This month we had a gain of 333 new likes to the page and only 6 new members of the group.

Twitter is growing more slowly, up only 251 this month, but we still have far more followers on Twitter than we have likes on Facebook. (7,418 Twitter followers vs 5,289 fans on Facebook).

On LinkedIn, despite no effort by us, we’ve now soared past the 1,000 barrier, having picked up 46 new members of our group there. That’s only one fewer than the number of new members of UnionBook (which grew by only 47 during this period).

Mailing lists

Total for all lists: 104,296 [101,775]

English: 75,597 [73,544]
French: 5,813 [5,777]
Spanish: 4,338 [4,177]
Italian: 3,872 [3,868]
Turkish: 3,114 [2,989]
German: 2,546 [2,497]
Norwegian: 2,344 [2,301]
Russian: 1,950 [1,945]
Dutch: 739 [738]
Chinese: 503 [500]
Polish: 308 [306]
Portuguese: 244 [243]
Japanese: 209 [ 209]
Farsi: 201 [201]
Hebrew: 189 [177]
Swedish: 187 [189]
Finnish: 184 [184]
Arabic: 169 [160]
Danish: 150 [153]

And just below the radar:

Korean 93 [93]
Indonesian 74

Social networks

UnionBook –
Members: 5,322 [5,275]

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 5,289 [4,956]
Members of LabourStart group: 4,778 [4,772]
Like LabourStart page (French): 234 [222]
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 67 [60]

Twitter followers -
English: 7,418 [7,167]

Union group on Flickr: 701 [698]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 1,037 [991]

Website

Correspondents: 1,028 [1,013]

Highlights this month -

Though August is traditionally a quiet month, and this is reflected in the lack of growth for the top mailing lists, we had a huge growth in our Turkish list (up by more than 50%, a gain of over 1,000 subscribers) and the German list grew by 202 subscribers, a gain of nearly 10%. In social networks, we’re rapidly approaching 5,000 ‘likes’ for our Facebook page in English, with another nearly 300 in French and Turkish. We’re just under 1,000 members of our LinkedIn group – which we’ve done absolutely nothing to publicize. We’re finally over 1,000 correspondents (and will need to soon starting weeding out the inactive ones). Finally, visits to the website soared for some reason in August, with a gain of almost 20% in unique visits and an additional 150,000 page views compared to July.

Mailing lists

Total for all lists: 101,775 [100,331]

English: 73,544 [73,474]
French: 5,777 [5,777]
Spanish: 4,177 [4,163]
Italian: 3,868 [3,873]
Turkish: 2,989 [1,897]
German: 2,497 [2,292]
Norwegian: 2,301 [2,281]
Russian: 1,945 [1,947]
Dutch: 738 [736]
Chinese: 500 [496]
Polish: 306 [306]
Portuguese: 243 [247]
Japanese: 209 [ 209]
Farsi: 201 [186]
Swedish: 189 [194]
Finnish: 184 [184]
Hebrew: 177 [157]
Danish: 153 [156]
Arabic: 160 [156]

And just below the radar:

Korean 93 [93]

Social networks

UnionBook –
Members: 5,275 [5,227]

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 4,956 [4,787]
Members of LabourStart group: 4,772 [4,762]
Like LabourStart page (French): 222 [213]
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 60

Twitter followers -
English: 7,167 [6,920]

Union group on Flickr: 698 [694]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 991 [951]

Website

Correspondents: 1,013 [994]

Unique visits to the site this month : 599,990 [509,378]
Peak day: 23,064 [23.8.12]
Page views this month: 1,312,682 [1,164,243]