Inside LabourStart

LabourStart only recently launched a Facebook Page –

http://www.facebook.com/labourstart.org

The page went live 18 days ago.

This comes after having had a Facebook Group for several years.

Pages have certain advantages – and they seem to go viral faster because updates appear on your own news feeds.

We were admittedly quite late to discover this and I’ve decided have a look around and see how many fans the various union Facebook pages currently have and when they were last updated.

Here’s a selection from the global unions (including the date last updated) — these are the ones with active Facebook pages:

1. UNI Global Union – 2,298 – 17 April
2. PSI – 1,903 – 18 April
3. International Trade Union Confederation – 1,640 – 16 April
4. LabourStart – 787 – 16 April
5. IUF – 662 – 16 April
6. IMF – 306 – 15 April

And these are the inactive ones:

1. ICEM – 209 – 4 March
2. IFJ – 90 – never updated
3. BWI – 27 – 12 April
4. Education International – 30 – 14 April
5. ITGLWF – no page
6. ITF – no page

As for national trade union centers in the English-speaking world, here’s a selection:

1. USA: AFL-CIO 25,182
2. UK: TUC 1,821
3. USA: Change to Win 1,412
4. Ireland: Irish Congress of Trade Unions 1,333
5. Canada: CLC 491
6. South Africa: COSATU 84
7. Australia: ACTU 32
8. New Zealand: CTU 31 [see comments below for more details]

We had 74 nominations this year – hard to compare that with last year as this time we blocked multiple submissions. We also have nominated films in different languages. As the judges will only review the films in English, and as we want to block multiple voting, here’s how I plan to organize the voting once we have the shortlist:

We’ll use Survey Monkey as we have done in the past – it should block multiple voting and will make it very easy to tabulate results, etc.

For the non-English films, I suggest we set up parallel voting so that individuals (presumably those who speak the language) can vote for their favorite Spanish film, for example. In other words, a parallel competition but without the panel of judges creating a shortlist. That should work for now.

I’m assuming that we won’t have the shortlist before May, so expect voting to take place then.

… probably none of the ones I mentioned yesterday. (We’re still waiting on Bahrain and Swaziland.) More likely, the first campaign of the new batch to be ready is going to be a South African campaign, for the NUMSA union and the ICEM. Details later today.

It’s been something like five weeks since we launched our last campaign – which now has reached over 3,000 supporters – and we’re waiting to hear from partner unions about possible next efforts. Here’s what’s on our radar at the moment –

• USA: IKEA – a great employer in Sweden, crap in the USA – a union organizing campaign facing employer hostility
• Bahrain: A lot of interest here from international unions, Amnesty, etc. We may have something as soon as this week
• Swaziland: Massive, violent crackdown on workers – we’ll see if we can help.

Furthermore we’re continuing with the ITUC and GUFs about running the occasional popular campaign, one where people will already know about the issue and will be keen to spread the word.

Two weeks ago I reported that 55 people had expressed an interest in attending our conference in November which is now just 7 months away.  That number has jumped to 138 in the last few days, with a third of them saying they do plan to attend and the rest are ‘maybes’.

I think we can breath a sigh of relief when the total number reaches the hundreds, especially when the number who say they are attending exceeds our goal.  Keeping in mind, of course, that this is NOT the official registration process which will begin later.

We now have the beginnings of campaigns-specific Frequently Asked Questions page (here) and this in addition to newly-designed pages to show current campaigns and our privacy policy.  When the FAQ is completed – and I’d really appreciate your comments and ideas – we’ll change the design of the main “show campaign” page to reflect the new colours and style.  And then I’ll ask translators to help make the whole spanking-new system work well in all languages.

Ten days ago we had 120 Facebook users “liking” our page; today it’s over 500.  Growth has been very good and I expect this to continue.

The next time we launch a major online campaign, people will not only see the Facebook page box on the new landing page (currently also displayed on our home page in English), but in the email they will receive from us, it will encourage them to visit the Facebook page.

Why does this matter?

Because, apparently, Pages are great tools for getting the word out about LabourStart in a way that our Group on Facebook isn’t.  There’s a discussion of the differences between Pages and Groups here.

So, if you haven’t yet done so, please check out our Facebook Page and make to sure to click on the ‘Like’ button.

Take a moment to look at our list of current campaigns in English.  Find one you haven’t yet sent a message to.  Send off your message. Note the final screen — a huge improvement on what we had, I think.  Still to do: versions in other languages, sending out an email message with similar links to those who send off messages, and using this lovely template for more of the pages including proper About and FAQ pages.  I am to have all that completed before we launch our next big campaign.

I continue doing the migration of most of our short and inactive lists to MailChimp – but am holding off on the biggest (Norwegian, French) until I have the consent of the editors.  Each day I migrate 5 or 6 languages over.

I’ve raised the question with the ITUC and some of the GUFs that we need a popular campaign – one that will get tens of thousands of supporters – in order to grow our list in the way that groups like 38degrees and Avaaz do.  Our campaigns tend to focus on little-known industrial disputes and often the first time anywhere has ever heard of these is when we campaign on them.  From time to time, we should take on more popular causes — and the growth of our mailing lists will mean that the smaller campaigns will benefit enormously.

I’ve posted a page where I intend to document all the campaigns we’ve done over the years — to see who has been asking us (recently, mostly GUFs), which countries are affected, how many people sign up, who the target was, and what the result on the ground was.  I’d personally find this useful when I give talks or write articles about online campaigning, but it will also more generally give us a sense of what we’ve been doing and where we should be going.

I’m in negotiations with an exiled Iraqi trade unionist in the USA — USLAW was circulating an appeal to people to help him out.  I think we’ll pay him something to translate some of our stuff (e.g., campaigns, mailings) into Arabic.

I’ve taken a number of important steps to make our site more secure, which I won’t be publishing here for obvious reasons.  Suffice it to say that the Berkman Center report on how human rights organizations are vulnerable to cyber-attack has influenced me and I had a fairly long to-do list of things which have all now been implemented.  I’m happy to discuss this with any of you by email.

We’ve been approached by the Illinois Labor History Society for help – they’re holding a major event (actually a week of events) in Chicago around the Haymarket Martyrs Monument.  They need a speaker from outside the USA and Canada (and they may have funds to pay for travel), they need donations, and they need letters of support and solidarity.  Perhaps some of you can help?  Please check out their website .