Oct
27
2008
0

GAP responds to our campaign

One of our readers forwarded this message on to me today. Further proof – as if any were needed – that our campaigns are effective.

From: gap.com Customer Service [mailto:custserv@gap.com]
Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2008 2:06 PM
To: **********
Subject: Re: GapCanada.ca Feedback (KMM76888400I28583L0KM)

Dear ******,

Thank you for your email about the current dispute between Oak Harbor
and the Teamsters. While we are aware, Gap Inc. is not a party to the
dispute and is not involved in negotiations in any way. We have been
monitoring the situation closely and have strongly urged both parties to
negotiate in good faith and to come to a fair and timely resolution.

Gap Inc. has a long-standing record as a socially responsible company,
and we set very high standards for ourselves as well as the vendors and
suppliers we work with. This has been demonstrated time and again over
the past decade, and is well-documented in our three social
responsibility reports. As guided by our long-standing work in the area
of social responsibility, we know that any rash decisions related to
changing contracts can have immediate and long-lasting impacts on the
suppliers and their employees. For that reason, we feel it?s critical
that we give Oak Harbor and the Teamsters an opportunity to resolve this
matter.

We thank you again for taking the time to contact us about this matter.
For more information about our social responsibility efforts, please
visit our website at gapinc.com.

Sincerely,

Maureen Carter
Gap Inc.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Oct
26
2008
0

Mass mailing goes out – let’s monitor the results

I’ve just sent out a mailing to our more than 52,000 subscribers in English. Even though it’s a Sunday, the effect of the mailing should be dramatic. The things we’ve asked people to do, and which we can monitor, include:

  1. Sending off a message in support of Oak Harbor strikers and join the associated Facebook cause.
  2. Voting in the Labour Photo of the Year.
  3. Donating to LabourStart.

In order to measure the impact of the mailing, it’s important to know our baseline, where we are starting from. So here are the initial numbers:

  • Messages sent in Oak Harbor campaign – 83 (English only)
  • Signed up to Facebook cause – 132 (Yes, 49 more than those who sent messages)
  • Labour Photo of the Year – 2,070 votes cast
  • Donations – none so far today

Stay tuned – update coming soon …

Updated 27.10.08 08:51 GMT

Campaign – 1,536
Facebook group – 458
Labour Photo of the Year – 2,212
Donations – $80.00 (4 donations)

Oct
26
2008
1

Labour photo competition result: 429 new subscribers

Our email lists continue to grow. Today, it turned out that 20% of those voting for the Labour Photo of the Year competition were not yet subscribers to our list, and had agreed to be added. That’s 429 more people on the mailing list — another great reason to have done this competition.

Written by admin in: Labour Photo of the Year,Mailing list |
Oct
26
2008
0

Sort order of news in country pages

It was pointed out to us that the clever solution we’ve come up for in the language home pages – which shows the most recently submitted stories on top – wasn’t yet working on the country home pages. So in countries with lots of stories each day, such as Canada, the most recently submitted stories were appearing at the bottom of the list. This has now been fixed.

Written by admin in: News database |
Oct
25
2008
0

Promoting a campaign

Twenty four hours after we posted the current campaign, only 3 people (myself included) have sent off messages.  This is in spite of the fact that it appears on top of our list on the English langauge home page, that it has been syndicated and a priority one story has been linked to it.  As I have long argued, merely publishing a campaign to a website has little effect.  We must do more.

So even though it’s a weekend and we don’t expect much of a response, I’ve started a publicity blitz that I hope will generate large numbers of new signatories to this campaign.  Here is what I’ve done (and I’ll keep updating this list as it goes along):

  • I’ve sent off the campaign link for translation into Norwegian, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Polish and Russian.  Other languages may follow.
  • I created a Cause on Facebook and invited 60 of my friends to join the cause – this is the maximum number I am allowed to invite today.  The Cause includes a link to the campaign page.  I’ve made this Cause my Featured Cause on my own Facebook profile.
  • I’ve changed our software so that if it detects that there is Facebook cause linked to the campaign, it automatically shows this on the campaign page.
  • Sent a message via Facebook to the 1,746 members of the LabourStart group.
  • Sent a Tweet to our 575 followers on Twitter — our first in nearly two months.
Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Oct
24
2008
0

Teamsters request a new campaign

UPDATE: This campaign has just gone live – in English.

We’ll be launching a new campaign today at the request of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Washington, D.C.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Oct
24
2008
0

Victory at Woolworths – LabourStart online campaign to close

We received this email two days ago from South Africa:

This serves to confirm that dully mandated representatives of the Union and the Company signed an agreement which effectively marks an end to a protracted strike over an organisational rights dispute between the SACCAWU and Woolworths. Union members will be returning to work from Friday the 24th of October whilst a Joint membership verification exercise will commence on Monday the 27th of October under the auspices of the CCMA. The Union accordingly calls off the consumer boycott since the dispute that compelled the Union to call for a consumer boycott has now been resolved.

We’ll be reporting this to our readers in this week’s mailing.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Oct
20
2008
0

AFL-CIO promotes our contest

See here

1,932 votes cast so far. See here.

Derek commented:

Thanks for the tip on this Andrew, Eric.Can I ask everyone to flog the contest page (NOT the counter page) to their lists ASAP? We have less than 2 weeks left in the voting period.

As well, it would be very good for the contestants and for future contests if we could arrange for the finalists or at least the winner to appear in as many places as possible. So if you have any contacts in the labour and progressive media and could work them a bit that would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Written by admin in: Labour Photo of the Year |
Oct
18
2008
0

Latest column for Labour Research magazine – all about LabourStart

Here’s the text of my latest column for Labour Research:

For more than a decade, LabourStart has provided online news for trade unionists. This summer the website underwent a major overhaul most of which was not visible to the casual visitor. But the changes have allowed British trade unionists to see things they could never see before.

A visit to http://www.labourstart.org/uk/ reveals a number of changes which we think you’ll find useful.

First of all, many of the news stories previously labelled as being from the “UK” are now also labelled if they are from England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

If you click on any of those terms (which are highlighted in green), you’re taken to a news page featuring news only from that region.

Second, on the main UK news page, where previously you were shown the most recent 100 news stories and had to use the search box to find any others, you can now click on a “more” button on the bottom of each page and scroll through.

This is useful because LabourStart features on average 100 UK trade union news stories every week.

Those news stories are collected from all over the web — from trade union websites, the BBC, and newspaper sites, including many local newspapers. Those doing the collecting are LabourStart’s volunteer correspondents. Over 140 of them have posted 31,000 UK union news stories in the last several years to our database. All 31,000 of those stories remain accessible — making this an invaluable tool for researchers.

Some people may not realise this, but you don’t need to visit the LabourStart website to see the latest UK labour news stories we’re linking to. Our syndication tool allows any union website to freely use the stories — it’s a simple copy and paste to do this. One hundred and twenty UK trade union websites use LabourStart’s newswire today.

You and your union can be more involved. You can signup to become a volunteer correspondent and make sure we cover your union’s news. And you can learn more about how to put a live union news feed on your website. Visit our front page at http://www.labourstart.org

Written by admin in: Publicity |
Oct
18
2008
0

Major British union asks for article about LabourStart

Activate is the magazine (print and web) for activists in the public sector union PCS (300,000 members). Here is their website.   I’ve been asked to prepare a 500 word article for their December issue about LabourStart.

Written by admin in: Publicity |

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