Feb
17
2023
0

New campaign launched in support of Polish union leader illegally sacked by IKEA

Sorry to have missed a week, but here’s the news from LabourStart in the last two weeks (since 3 February):

New campaign: We launched a new campaign in support of Solidarnosc in Poland – one of their leaders at IKEA has been illegally sacked by the company. This campaign took off very quickly, with over 3,200 supporters in less than 24 hours. It is our first campaign in a few months and it looks like our supporters are keen to help.

Old campaigns: We closed our Marlboro campaign in Turkey (with the permission of DISK). We’ve also closed two very old campaigns in Kazakhstan and Pakistan after several unsuccessful attempts to get news from the unions. In generals our campaigns run for three months, no more. We don’t want ‘stale’ campaigns that no one signs up for on our home page – it sends the wrong message to employers and governments.

Global Solidarity Conference: This is now exactly ten weeks (70 days) away. Over 100 people have already registered and we have a conference website which are updating every day. Please register there if you’ve not yet done so, and please share that link widely. Esther Lynch, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, has agreed to speak at the conference.

Correspondents: We have an ongoing problem with people signing up to be correspondents, and then never posting news. Last week, we fixed a script which shows all new correspondents in the last two years and we identified 13 of them as having never posted a news story — and then wrote to all 13 of them. This will be done regularly. We should not give up on people who may simply not know how, or have forgotten how to login.

Donations: We received a generous donation from EPSU, PSI’s European region.  Donations from our supporters are not has high as we would have liked because the mass mailing asking for donations has only gone out to a small number of lists.   We don’t yet have translations yet for some of our major languages including French, German, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian and Turkish.  All of those lists have 1,000 or more subscribers and it would be very helpful if we could get those translations done.

Canada: Pat Bulmer has replaced Derek Blackadder as our coordinator in Canada. Good luck, Pat and to Derek — thanks for decades of fantastic work there.

Jan
20
2023
0

Myrtle and Shane – Rest in Peace

We lost two good comrades last week, both of whom appeared at LabourStart conferences in recent years — Shane Enright in the UK and Myrtle Witbooi in South Africa.

Shane, who had been on the staff of the ITF, worked for Amnesty International UK and was in charge of the trade unions, where he did exemplary work over years.  Among other things, he arranged for our 2008 LabourStart conference in London to be hosted at the Amnesty headquarters.

Myrtle was the inspiring leader of the domestic workers movement, first in South African and later as President of the International Domestic Workers Federation.  She gave a memorable speech at LabourStart’s 2014 Global Solidarity Conference in Berlin and also spoke at our online International Women’s Day event last year.

May their memory be blessed.

In other news …

Global Solidarity Conference: Last week we had good calls with leaders of two global unions, and there’s a call next week with another. We’re getting very good feedback on the conference. Meanwhile, we now have a logo and a working registration form in English and Georgian, and we have a page that shows all registrants.

Fundraising: We did an appeal to all LabourStart correspondents yesterday — so far, with minimal results.

Jan
01
2023
0

LabourStart in Numbers: 1 January 2023

The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the first day of last month.  Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since last month.

Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in italics.  Lists or accounts which experienced growth are in bold.

 

MAILING LISTS:

The top 10:

English: 83067-82457

French: 7546-7523

German: 5842

Spanish: 5534-5505

Turkish: 4169

Korean: 3320

Italian: 3095

Russian: 2690

Norwegian: 2161

Romanian:  1771

Dutch: 1502

 

The others:

Arabic:  821

Belarusian:  288

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 901

Creole:  11

Czech: 60

Danish: 93

Esperanto: 186-182

Farsi:  207

Finnish:  472

Georgian:  141

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  293

Hindi:  80

Hungarian:  180

Indonesian:  460

Japanese: 398

Lithuanian:  63

Malaysian: 21

Polish: 842

Portuguese: 1290

Punjabi:  2

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15

Swedish: 950

Tagalog: 183

Thai:  152

Ukrainian: 493

Vietnamese:  21

Internal:

Executive and Interns:  12

LabourStart Correspondents:  668-666

LabourStart Translators:  91

Africa Caucus:  63

 

FLICKR:

Members:  838-839

Photos:  10007-9980

 

TELEGRAM:

LabourStart channel:  122-121

 

FACEBOOK PAGES/GROUPS:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

LabourStart.org page likes:  13723-13717

LabourStart.org page follows: 14678

Global Labour News and Information: 8940-8956

LabourStart UK likes:  page unavailable

LabourStart UK follows:  2171

LabourStart Francophone: 607-590 (last post February 2021)

LabourStart-de: 500-496

LabourStart Brasil:  553-552

LabourStart Turkce:  2116

LabourStart TV likes: 443-447

LabourStart TV follows:  454

LabourStart Vostok:  119

LabourStart Esperanto:  18

LabourStart Nepal:  6 (last post April 2017)

LabourStart Israel: CLOSED (last post 2018)

 

LINKEDIN:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Group: 2603

Page: 242-226

 

TWITTER:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers for these  accounts with the exception of the Global English account which received occasional attention.

Slow growth and losses, especially the USA account’s continuing decline, can be attributed to users’ response to Musk’s takeover of the site.

Global English: 39076

Canada English: 23251-22962

Portuguese: 11060-11002

Global Spanish: 10468-10319

Australia: 10584-10581

USA: 5267-5300

Canada French: 3046-3061

Russian: 47

Hebrew:  48 (last tweet 02-2021)

Italian: 507 (last tweet 11-2021)

Swedish: 335 (last tweet 2016)

Indonesia: 341 (last tweet 2015)

French: 224 (last tweet 2018)

German: 120 (last tweet 2018)

Japanese: 21 (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)

South Asia (English): 22 Placeholder and not yet active.

Dec
30
2022
0

Last post from 2022

The final week of 2022 was destined to be a relatively quiet one as many union offices shut down for the holiday.

Nevertheless, we did a few things at LabourStart …

  • We sent out an end-of-year mailing to all our correspondents. This encouraged them to contact us if they’re having difficulty logging in to post news, to help recruit new correspondents and to publicise our news page more widely.
  • Our mailing lists grew this week as we added 52 more subscribers from the new campaign supporters.
  • We did more work to publicise our Belarus campaign across social media. That campaign now has 7,938 supporters — a gain of 50 in the last week. We also shared widely the ITUC statement condemning the sentences handed down to the jailed leaders of the trade union movement in that country. (Unfortunately the ITUC has not yet translated the statement, so it’s only in English.)
  • We continued work fixing LabourStart’s back-end. This week that included dealing with a bug in the caption for our photo-of-the-day feature, as well as problems with character encoding on our home page for some Spanish-language stories. We continued work creating new and fixed RSS feeds for a number of countries. Unfortunately, not all of these yet function correctly, but we’re continuing the work.
  • We continued this week with discussions with our partners in Georgia in the run-up to our upcoming Global Solidarity Conference at the end of April.

In 2023 we’re looking forward to working harder and smarter to defend workers’ rights and rebuild union power all over the world. Thanks to all of you for all that you do — and happy new year!

Dec
01
2022
0

LabourStart in Numbers: 1 December 2022

There was no report for 1 November so the prior totals are all those current on 1 October.

The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the first day of last month.  Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since last month.

Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in italics.  Lists or accounts which experienced growth are in bold.

 

MAILING LISTS:

The top 10:

English: 82457

French: 7523-7490

German: 5842-5796

Spanish: 5505

Turkish: 4169

Korean: 3320-3311

Italian: 3095-3091

Russian: 2690-2686

Norwegian: 2161-2142

Romanian:  1771

Dutch: 1502-1492

The others:

Arabic:  821

Belarusian:  288

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 901-899

Creole:  11

Czech: 60

Danish: 93-92

Esperanto: 182-180

Farsi:  207

Finnish:  472-469

Georgian:  141-135

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  293-292

Hindi:  80

Hungarian:  180-179

Indonesian:  460

Japanese: 398

Lithuanian:  63

Malaysian: 21

Polish: 842

Portuguese: 1290-1287

Punjabi:  2

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15

Swedish: 950-947

Tagalog: 183-159

Thai:  152

Ukrainian: 493-487

Vietnamese:  21

Internal:

Executive and Interns:  12

LabourStart Correspondents:  666-665

LabourStart Translators:  91-87

Africa Caucus:  63

 

FLICKR:

Members:  839-837

Photos:  9980-9899

 

TELEGRAM:

LabourStart channel:  121-125

 

FACEBOOK PAGES/GROUPS:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

LabourStart.org page likes:  13717-13709

LabourStart.org page follows: 14678-14668

Global Labour News and Information: 8956-9027

LabourStart UK likes:  page unavailable

LabourStart UK follows:  2171

LabourStart Francophone: 590 (last post February 2021)

LabourStart-de: 496

LabourStart Brasil:  552-508

LabourStart Turkce:  2116-2126

LabourStart TV likes: 447-441

LabourStart TV follows:  454

LabourStart Vostok:  119

LabourStart Esperanto:  18

LabourStart Nepal:  6 (last post April 2017)

LabourStart Israel: CLOSED (last post 2018)

 

LINKEDIN:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Group: 2603-2588

Page: 226-216

 

TWITTER:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers for these  accounts.  Some accounts’ slow growth and losses, especially the USA account’s decline, can be attributed to users’ response to Musk’s takeover of the site.

Global English: 39076-38225

Canada English: 22962-22601

Portuguese: 11002-10687

Global Spanish: 10319-10064

Australia: 10581-9965

USA: 5300-5435

Canada French: 3061-3114

Russian: 47-46

Hebrew:  48 (last tweet 02-2021)

Italian: 507-508 (last tweet 11-2021)

Swedish: 335 (last tweet 2016)

Indonesia: 341-350 (last tweet 2015)

French: 224-227 (last tweet 2018)

German: 120 (last tweet 2018)

Japanese: 21 (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)

South Asia (English): 22 Placeholder and not yet active.

 

 

Aug
01
2022
0

LabourStart in Numbers: 1 August 2022

The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the first day of last month.  Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since last month.

Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in italics.  Lists or accounts which experienced growth are in bold.

 

Mailing Lists:

The top 10:

English: 73493

French: 7457

German: 5796-5766

Spanish: 5428

Turkish: 4161

Korean: 3308

Italian: 3074

Russian: 2668

Norwegian: 2121

Romanian:  1771

Dutch: 1476

The others:

Arabic:  821

Belarusian:  288

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 899

Creole:  11

Czech: 63

Danish: 92

Esperanto: 178

Farsi:  207

Finnish:  465

Georgian:  135

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  289

Hindi:  80

Hungarian:  178

Indonesian:  460

Japanese: 386

Lithuanian:  63

Malaysian: 21

Polish: 837

Portuguese: 1287

Punjabi:  2

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15

Swedish: 947

Tagalog: 159

Thai:  152

Ukrainian: 313

Vietnamese:  21

Internal:

Executive and Interns:  12

LabourStart Correspondents:  662-659

LabourStart Translators:  87

Africa Caucus:  63

 

Flickr:

Members:  837-838

Photos:  10303-10297

 

Facebook Pages/Groups:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

LabourStart.org page likes:  13553-13547

LabourStart.org page follows: 14499-14490

Global Labour News and Information: 9011-9013

LabourStart UK likes:  page unavailable-2032

LabourStart UK follows:  page unavailable-2096

LabourStart Francophone: 590 (last post February 2021)

LabourStart Brasil:  502

LabourStart Turkce:  2101-2104

LabourStart TV likes: 443-446

LabourStart TV follows:  455-460

LabourStart Israel: CLOSED (last post 2018)

 

LinkedIn:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Group: 2559-2545

Page: 188-123

 

Twitter:

Sporadic efforts were made to grow the Global English-language, Canadian English-language, Australian, Global Portuguese-language and Global Spanish- feeds.  No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers for other accounts.

Global English: 36978-36427

Canada English: 21291-20951

Portuguese: 9606-9193

Global Spanish: 9097-8940

Australia: 9031-8754

USA: 5453-5481

Canada French: 3109-3098

Russian: 46

Hebrew:  48 (last tweet 02-2021)

Italian: 508-507 (last tweet 11-2021)

Swedish: 335-337 (last tweet 2016)

Indoesia: 350 (last tweet 2015)

French: 226 (last tweet 2018)

German: 120 (last tweet 2018)

Japanese: 21 (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)

South Asia (English): 21 NEW and not yet active.

 

 

Aug
01
2022
0

Weekly update: Global conference, Iran, News database, Correspondents, Campaigns

Conference 2023: We have begun work planning our next Global Solidarity Conference — which is long overdue — in Tbilisi.  The Georgian Trade Union Confederation has named its members of the steering committee and we have invited members of the LabourStart Executive to participate as well.  We hope to have the first meeting of the joint committee very soon.

Iran: We have raised workers’ rights cases in Iran with three global union federations — IndustriALL, the ITF and Education International.  EI has requested to be included as a sponsor of our current campaign; we have asked about whether they want a separate campaign for a teacher activist.

News database: The work repairing this continues as we consider moving the whole database to a different web hosting company.  (Support from our current hosts has been non-existent — and they caused the problem in the first place.)

New correspondents: We added three new correspondents last week from Canada (Iran), Germany and Hong Kong (UK).

Campaigns: We had been invited to prepare a campaign in support of a workers’ rights activist in Kenya, but the company caved and agreed to the demands before a campaign could be launched.

Jan
08
2022
0

30,000 followers on Twitter; Kazakhstan; Rosa Luxemburg and more

Kazakhstan: We are posting news and monitoring the situation in Kazakhstan; an online campaign is being considered by our partners.

Correspondents: We picked up one new correspondent in the USA and reconnected another. We hope to shortly hold our first ever (virtual) meeting of the more than 115 LabourStart correspondents in the USA.

Fundraising: Our first major donation of 2022 has arrived and its from the IUF in Geneva.

Instagram: We are renewing our work on the LabourStart page on Instagram, helped by one of our interns. If you’re on Instagram, please do follow this page and share it with others – thanks!

Interns: We are about to start interviewing possible interns who are currently studying at the Global Labour Labour University.

T-shirts: We’ve begun promoting the third working class history t-shirt of the month, this time featuring Rosa Luxemburg.

Twitter: In late December we reached our target of 30,000 followers for our global feed in English on Twitter.  This morning we were at 30,323.

Dec
10
2021
0

Boosting global unions on Twitter

Twitter: We created a List of global unions and publicised it widely across social media (but not yet in a mass mailing). The list already has 25 followers and we’ve been re-tweeting many of the posts there to boost interest in what the global unions are saying and doing.

Africa: We wrote to all 68 correspondents we identified in 19 countries noting that we’ll hold our first online event with them in January.

Romania: With the agreement of the ETF, we closed down the long-running campaign in support of Bucharest metro workers.  The campaign had nearly 7,800 supporters, making it one of the largest recent campaigns.

Interns: We will be reaching out to labour studies departments looking for recent graduates as potential paid interns (living wage). We have also been approached by GLU to again take interns this coming year.

LabourStartJobs.org: We gave further publicity to this sub-site of LabourStart, which continues to feature jobs in unions in the UK and Canada, with a smattering form elsewhere.  27 jobs were posted here in the first 9 days of December.

Mailing lists: Our lists grew by another 143 subscribers this week – 96 of those for the English list.

Podcast: The Union Dues podcast (UK) featuring Eric Lee talking about LabourStart is the third most popular they have ever done, with about 215 listeners. We did a further round of publicity later in the week to boost this a bit.

 

Sep
09
2021
0

Weekly update: Afghanistan, Iran, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Sweden and Thailand

Afghanistan: We continue to look for, and promote, news about the fate of the trade unions and workers, with several top stories — many coming from the International Federation of Journalists.

Iran: We’ll be participating in an online event on Sunday in support of striking oil workers.

Korea: We had a lot of information about the arrest of the leader of the KCTU, and publicised this across social media.

Kyrgyzstan: We shared widely the good news that following a campaign on LabourStart, the anti-worker bill was finally vetoed by the President.

Sweden: Our comrades have asked us to wait until 15 September before launching the campaign.

Thailand: We’re asked for permission to close down the campaign which has now been running for three months.

Correspondents: We signed up new correspondents in Brussels and Geneva. Our new Moroccan correspondent has been active, posting in Arabic, French and English.

Donations: We received a generous donation from UNI Global Union.

Essential for Recovery event: We did extensive publicity to support this event, which is being backed by ITUC, UNI, Solidarity Center, WIEGO and others.

Global Labour Calendar 2022: We’re continuing to collect photos and suggestions for dates to highlight. If there are dates in this list that you think should appear in the calendar, please let us know.

Jobs: We were approached by two unions who asked about how jobs are added to LabourStart and one has already signed up as a correspondent to post these. Unions are beginning to see the value in LabourStartJobs.org. Correspondents are encouraged to post jobs using the same link as we use to post news.

Written by admin in: Campaigns,Correspondents,Events,Fund-raising |

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