Jan
31
2019
0

New year – new campaigns, with 3 launched in the last 2 weeks

Bangladesh: We shared the story about the garment strikers being sacked widely on a social media, and as a top global news story.

Brazil: We shared the BWI/IndustriALL statement on Vale and the dam disaster on social media and as a top global news story.

Canada: We did a mailing to our Canadian supporters in support of the UFCW.

Germany: We shared widely on social media and as a top global news story the Education International story about a joint German/Polish/Israeli teachers’ event to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

Guatemala: We launched a new campaign at the request of PSI.

Iran: At the request of Amnesty International, we shared their campaign as a top global labour news story, and across social media. Earlier, we publicised the re-arrest of Iranian trade unionist Esmail Bakhshi at the request of one of our correspondents in New Zealand.

Korea: We launched a new campaign at the request of PSI.

Philippines: At the request of the Education International, we launched a campaign. It is now live in 15 languages.

South Africa: We shared a COSATU general strike story widely on social media.

Sudan: We publicised a story about Sudanese protests – led by the doctors’ union – as a top global news story and across social media.

Thailand: Noting the low participation rates for the Thai language version of the campaign, we wrote to the ITF and they have contacted the local union to ensure broader support.

Tunisia: We shared our coverage of the general strike widely on social media.

UK: We added a new correspondent.

USA: We shared the Labor Notes story about victory in LA teachers’ strike across social media, and as a top global news story.

Labour Photo of the Year: We began discussing the possibility of reviving this competition.

Mailing lists: We added 211 campaign supporters to our lists.

Coding issues: There was a fairly long to-do list here, but we’ve managed to cross a few of the items off the list.
We managed to fix the repeating text in the left column of country news pages in French — this was a particular problem for the Canadian news page.
We also fixed a problem with the display of labour history items in French on the Canada page.
We fixed our news page to ensure that when clicking on a state or province, you are taken to the new page and the correct language (this was previously hard-coded to English).
We fixed it so that all countries that have directories named after them now point to the correct pages, e.g., www.labourstart.org/cuba.
We fixed the display of country names in the centre column on the Spanish page.
We changed the campaign page to offer a radio button with yes/no options for joining the mailing list. Some campaigning organisations, including Britain’s TUC, have found that this increases the number of people who opt-in to mailing lists.
We fixed the problem which would arise when people adding commas to their names when supporting our campaigns; this breaks the syntax for sending emails, and has lead to some bounces recently.

Dec
02
2011
1

Competitions

Following the discussion we held at the annual correspondents’ meeting in Istanbul, we will not be hold a Labour Photo of the Year competition this year.  However, we will continue with the Labour Video of the Year competition and I will begin work on this on 9 January, when I’m back from winter travels.  We will also be exploring the possibility – suggested by Kristyne Peter of the IMF – of ‘campaign of the year’.

Jan
07
2011
1
Jan
04
2011
0

We have a winner

And the winning photo of the year for 2010 is …

Written by admin in: Labour Photo of the Year |
Dec
06
2010
2

Labour Photo of the Year

Labour Photo of the Year 2010 shortlist.

Screenshot of the five choices.

We’ve got 5 great photos this year – thanks to Gretchen Donart, Mac Urata and David Bacon for once again volunteering to select the shortlist.

Now voting begins – check out the photos and vote here.

Written by admin in: Labour Photo of the Year |
Dec
04
2010
0

Saturday morning quick updates

  • Last week we published our first news story in Tamil.
  • We’ve been in touch with our comrades in Tbilisi and have been assured that our Georgian language edition will go live next week.
  • We’re expecting the translation into Hindi to be ready in the next few days.
  • Our front page in Turkish now includes graphical links to all the country’s national trade union centers as well as two pro-labour NGOs we’ve been working with – and they’ve all been informed of this.  One of the centers (DISK) has discussed ways to cooperate with us.  Meanwhile, a very large number of Turkish trade unionists have signed up to use UnionBook.
  • The ITF has called for a global day of action in support of Turkey’s TUMTIS union which is locked in dispute with UPS – we may need to launch a big online campaign in another week or two.
  • We have a new newswire – USA labour news stories in Spanish.
  • We stopped submissions to our Labour Photo of the Year competition and the judges are currently preparing a shortlist.
  • I’ve begun work in earnest on our iPhone/iPad app.
  • We’ve asked correspondents to help our comrades in Egypt (at CTUWS) who are looking for books to translate into Arabic – they’ve begun with one that was a LabourStart book of the week.
Nov
14
2010
1

Labour Photo of the Year – problems

There has not been a great uptake to this year’s Labour Photo of the Year competition.  This may be in part due to our failure to promote it with a dedicated mailing (it was included with some urgent campaigns).  Today I’ll be writing to all members of UnionBook (2,192 people), all LabourStart correspondents (716 people), and all members of our Facebook group (3,854 people); tomorrow we’ll mail to our lists but there will have to be other things in the message.  Please do what you can to promote this competition.  Full details are here. Thanks.

Written by admin in: Labour Photo of the Year |
Oct
19
2010
0

News briefs

I haven’t been able to update this blog for some 4 weeks and lots has happened in that time. Here are some highlights:

New campaigns: We launched three new campaigns – India: Over 500 workers jailed in dispute with Foxconn (4,036 messages sent so far), Thailand: Migrant workers have the right to workers’ compensation (1,703 messages), and Colombia: Free jailed university lecturer and trade unionist (1,707 messages). We’ve closed down one campaign last Friday — PSI’s campaign in support of jailed workers in Turkey.

LabourStart.tv: The domain registrar closed our account in late September — we’re now making efforts to get it reopened. Meanwhile, I’ve changed the link on our front page to point to http://www.labourstart.org/tv which works.

Labour and Technology podcasts: I’ve done two of these in the last month – Spammers and online communities: The challenge for trade unions (50 listeners) and Activist apps (258 listeners).

Labour photo of the year: Derek and I have agreed to begin work on this in another couple of weeks.

UnionBook: The old site has been completely shut down and unionbook.org and unionbook.org.uk now both point to the new site.

Upcoming conferences: I have been invited to speak at a conference of the International Metalworkers Federation in Geneva next week — it’s called “IMF global trade union networks in TNC’s as a tool to organising and promoting solidarity”. I’ve also been invited to Istanbul to speak at a conference on trade unions new media on 27 November.

2011 LabourStart global solidarity conference: Andrew has made some progress on this and we’ll be talking about it and beginning planning within the next few days.

Labour’s online bookstore: We’re ready to use the new version of UCS’s software, and this should be live in a day or two. We continue to promote about one book per month.  Authors and publishers continue to contact us regularly asking us to promote books.

Nov
03
2009
3

Photo of the Year follow-up

There is already considerable interest in the photo.  For example:

  • The Education International wants to use it in their magazine and has asked the photographer for permission.
  • The International Metalworkers Federation will use it in an upcoming story — I think on the web.
  • Amnesty International wants to use it in their glossy, full colour UK trade union magazine.

In addition, while there have only been 17 comments posted on Flickr since we announced the results (because you have to be signed in to Flickr in order to comment), Asad’s photo has been viewed 10,424 times — which is pretty amazing.

Written by ericlee in: Labour Photo of the Year |
Nov
01
2009
0

Labour photo of the year 2009 – the winner

K M Asads winning photo.  A Bangladeshi boy works in a shipbuilding factory in down town.

K M Asad's winning photo. "A Bangladeshi boy works in a shipbuilding factory in down town."

We have a winner.  3,203 votes were cast in this year’s Labour Photo of the Year competition, our second ever, and the winner by a huge margin was K M Asad’s photo entitled ‘Manual labor’.

Almost half of those voting chose this photo – to see a full breakdown of votes per photo, go here.

A very big thanks to Mac Urata for coming up with the idea last year and for agreeing to be a judge this year and last (and for translating the page into Japanese), to Derek Blackadder for once again coordinating the effort, to judges Gretchen Donart and David Bacon for once again picking an outstanding shortlist, to all the photographers who submitted entries and to the thousands of our readers who looked at them and chose the best.

It looks like this is going to be an annual event and I think our main task next year is to try to make the whole process, from submission of photo right up through the voting a multilingual one, so that all our readers can take part.  (This may mean no longer relying on Flickr — we’ll need to look into this.)

Written by ericlee in: Labour Photo of the Year |

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