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]

As I may have already mentioned, people at the recent e-Campaigning Forum talked up Reddit as a way to bring traffic to websites.

It costs nothing, so why not?

Basically, when creating a campaign (or translating one), make sure to go to Reddit’s ‘labor’ section, login (you should create an account for yourself first), and add the link to the campaign.

After you’ve done so, Reddit will show a “shortlink” that will look like this: http://redd.it/1bih7f

Modify the campaign and in the “Reddit_URL” field, paste in that shortlink.

You’ll know you’ve done it correctly if the Reddit icon then appears on your campaign, underneath the Facebook and Google ones on the right side of the page.

The biggest news:

I just set up CloudFlare as a way of ensuring that LabourStart stays online no matter what.  It should also theoretically really speed up the display of our site, anywhere in the world.  It should kick in sometime in the next 48 hours.  If LabourStart suddenly becomes unusable  that probably means I did something wrong with the setup. In that case, please email me making sure not to use a labourstart.org address — email me at [email protected], which will get through.  Make sure you note that email address now, as this blog will also become inaccessible if our site goes offline.

Other news:

Facebook: We have a new Hebrew language Facebook page, updated daily and picking up followers fairly quickly.  We’re up to 48 likes.  We also have pages in Turkish (99 likes), French (300 likes) and English (6,441 likes).  We only have 209 people on our Hebrew language mailing list, so this is quite good — 1 in 4 are now Facebook fans.  If we had the same result in English, we’d have something like 19,000 fans on Facebook.

New home page: The new home page is now working in 11 languages and should be working in all 29 by the end of this week.  Following a vigorous discussion about the logo, we’ll make a decision in the next few days.

New pages for countries and state/provinces: This is also being configured according to the new design, and hugely improved.  See for example the new UK home page at http://www.labourstart.org.uk.

Campaigns: The Hong Kong dock workers remains our latest, with over 7,300 messages sent so far, though we will likely be launching a new one today for the ITF.  We’ve added a prominent link on campaigns to Reddit which, according to participants in the recent e-Campaigning Forum, can be a very effective way to boost traffic to a site (at no cost).  Two of our oldest campaigns — Nissan USA and the Philippines — have been closed.  A new version of a Canada-only campaign has also been launched, with over 600 messages this week.

Mailing lists: We now have a mailing list in Thai with 49 subscribers, and our first campaign in that language.

Book: We’re nearly done with the writing of our introduction to the global labour movement — we hope to go to press this Friday and have copies ready for sale by 4th May, when we hold the LabourStart May Day party in London.

May Day party:  This important fund-raising event takes place on 4th May this year at the Bread & Roses pub in London.  I’m hoping to raise up to £1,000 pounds.  So far, over 200 people have either confirmed their attendance or said they may come (slightly more say they will definitely come).  The general secretary of the ITF is due to speak, as are others.  Two performers have volunteered to provide the entertainment for the evening — Dave Thorpe and The Ruby Kid.

Today in Labour History: Edd’s added many more items, as we need to ensure that we have at least one for each month for each of the major countries.  This appears on the bottom of our UK page, if you want to see what it looks like.  Comrades who can help should contact us [email protected]

Dormant languages: We’ve identified 11 languages where correspondents have ceased posting news — we’ll need to chase them up and find replacements, but if comrades have any suggestions they’d be most welcome.  The languages are:

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]

Annual survey: We’ve gone up from 500 responses to 2,082. We still need 872 more to beat last year’s record. We got an article on the TUC blog, Stronger Unions, which has helped boost interest in the UK.  We’ll stop collecting responses in just 13 more days — on 19 March.

Site re-design: I incorporated most of the comments made by comrades on what I did so far. Masha, who is a professional graphic designer, is going to suggest a new logo design soon — once we have that, we can go live, first with the English version. The draft site is here.

Campaigns: We launched our Turkey campaign and it’s already up to 8,613 supporters. We closed down the Bahrain and Netherlands FNV campaigns (see separate posts for reports.) Edd and I both did articles about the Turkey campaign for Solidarity and the New Left Project (a website).

Book 1 (Online campaigning): The French edition has been created and is available for purchase. Sales of both editions have now reached 611, with another 43 free copies given out, for a total of 654. We’ve now paid for ‘extended distribution’ meaning that the books (in English and French) will be available in bookshops and from other online retailers, including Amazon Canada.

Book 2 (Global labour movement): Edd and I are working hard on this one, aiming to get it ready by May Day. In addition to what we’re writing, we solicited submissions from a number of comrades and are pleased that we’ll have contributions from ICTUR, Amnesty, the Global Labour Institutes, the TUC and others. See more details here: http://www.labourstart.org/blogs/?p=2818

Internationalization: We’ll have campaigns in Slovak starting this week. All our campaigns have been translated into Esperanto and our translation group in that language now has 8 members. I’ve contributed an article (an interview, of sorts) for an Austrian Esperanto magazine about LabourStart. We’ll have a Korean interface for our news later today.

Fundraising: We now have a venue and date for our London May Day fundraiser – May 4th, 19:30 at the Bread and Roses pub.  Two months before the event, 77 people say they are coming or may be coming.

Public speeches: I spoke at the Unison Wales Women’s Development Weekend in Swansea on Saturday to an audience of about 26; I sold all 10 of the online campaigning books I brought with me. Next Wednesday, Edd and I (and Anita Gardner of IndustriALL) will be on a panel at the e-Campaigning Forum in Oxford. On March 31st, I’ve been invited to speak at a fringe meeting of the annual conference in Bournemouth of the teachers union NASUWT. In addition, Napo – the probation officers union – has asked me to run a workshop on social media.

Social Networks: We now have a page on Google+ which, according to our survey, is widely used by trade unionists.

App for smartphones and tablets: I’m completing one this week for the IUF and when done, I’ll know how to do the one for LabourStart.

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]