Aug
31
2011
0

And on a personal note …

Having just returned from 15 days away on holiday, there’s a backlog of 222 emails to answer, plus 95 LabourStart tasks on my to-do list.  Your patience is appreciated.

Update one day later: Now down to 179 emails to answer, and 90 LabourStart tasks, as of 05:55 London time, 1.9.11.

Written by admin in: Uncategorized |
Aug
30
2011
3

Back at my desk – Fiji; Istanbul

While on holiday I managed to launch an ActNOW campaign in support of the embattled trade unions of Fiji – at the request of the British TUC and ITUC. Even without the normally extensive LabourStart publicity, it has already gotten 2,184 messages sent and was translated (without prompting by me) into two languages. Today I asked 11 other volunteer translators to get to work on it, and am beginning our own publicity blitz.

Update: Following our publicity blitz, support is increasing.  Here are the latest totals as of 10:00 London time (Wednesday), 12 hours later  –

  • 4,213 supporters
  • 730 recommendations on Facebook

A lot remains undone for our upcoming Global Solidarity Conference – this will be my top priority in the next week. I leave next Wednesday, 7 September, for Istanbul, where I’ll be meeting with our Turkish comrades and we’ll try to fix all outstanding issues.

Written by admin in: 2011 conference,Campaigns |
Aug
12
2011
0

Coming soon: Online registration for Istanbul hotel

I hope this will be up later today so that we can begin registering for rooms. Stay tuned – watch this space.

Written by admin in: 2011 conference |
Aug
11
2011
0

Iraq campaign suspended

We’ve been given permission to suspend our current Iraq campaign. The GFIW tells us: “The situation in Iraq is quiet now–re trade unions rights- since May-June upheaval and the ITUC, TUC and ILO intervention. The oil union leader in Kirkuk, thanks to the labourstart Campaign, has not been relocated, al though the risk of being relocated is still hanging over his head.” By the end, the campaign got 3,430 messages sent – making it one of the larger recent campaigns.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Aug
10
2011
3

100 days to go

Our conference opens in Istanbul in another 14 weeks and 2 days, and while of course there is still an enormous amount to do, we have made some progress.  Today I’d like to focus on what’s gone right so far:

  • We have a steering committee up and running in Istanbul and I’m confident that they’ll do an excellent job.  I will meet with them on 7 September.
  • We now have a conference hotel at a great price – more details coming soon.
  • We secured a great conference venue – at Petrol-Is, the oil workers union.
  • 108 people have registered so far – 40 of them say they can pay their own way.  Of those 40, 29 are from outside Turkey, so those plus the ones we expect via the Solidarity Center bring us up to nearly 40 — getting very close to our goal of 50 participants from outside Turkey.
  • We have a significant number of workshop proposals which we need to refine and finalize.
  • We have tentative commitments from one, possibly two, very senior international trade union leaders to speak at the event.
  • At the meeting of global union federations in Istanbul in September, we have a slot to talk about the conference and to encourage participation from GUFs.  We already have commitments for participation from the IUF, IMF, ITF, and others.
Written by admin in: 2011 conference |
Aug
06
2011
0

Malawi campaign now live

Let’s spread the word – this is not going to be an easy one to build, both because of the subject and the timing (August).  Click here to send your message today:

http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=1074

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Aug
05
2011
0

Friday afternoon shorts …

Conference: We’ve jumped from 69 to 85 registrants – and now have 11 from the UK, due to a special mailing I did.  The Solidarity Center is now telling us we should have 8 participants from 4 Arab countries as well.

Campaigns: Vale Colombia is now closed.  Malawi one should launch today.

Newswires: I’ve been doing a lot of work on the regional newswires, which had not been working for a very long time.  Most of them are now working fine.  I’ll give a full update when complete.

Absence: Early warning – I will be away from my desk from 15-30 August with only very limited email access (and none at all during the first week).

Written by admin in: 2011 conference,Campaigns,Newswires |
Aug
04
2011
0

Fixed a long-standing, incredibly annoying issue

If you posted a news story that had a double quote in the title, e.g. Union calls for “unlimited” strike action, it was likely to save this to our database as Union calls for.

In other words, it would break the line at the first double quote it encountered.

I have now fixed this – it substitutes the single quote, so if you key in Union calls for “unlimited” strike action it will save this to our database and render it is Union calls for ‘unlimited’ strike action.

Written by admin in: News database |
Aug
04
2011
0

Vale Colombia campaign to close; Malawi campaign on the way

Malawi protests.

18 killed in Malawi protests - global unions take action.

It’s August, schools are closed, many trade union offices are working with skeletal staffs.  (At least in Europe.)  And yet we have a steady flow of requests for new campaigns, updates on existing ones, and so forth.

According to a report we got from the United Steelworkers in North America, “the union at Vale in Colombia advised would be best to stop LS email campaign for now.”

Meanwhile, expect a new campaign relating to Malawi – see this ITUC press statement.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Aug
02
2011
3

Time to get serious about our conference

With little more than 100 days to go, we need to work hard now to make sure that our conference is a success.

At the moment, I’m most concerned about turnout. As of this morning, we had 69 people registered – of these 7 were from Turkey and 62 from abroad.

Our target for the conference is 200 – 150 from Turkey and 50 from abroad.

And that’s not all the bad news — only 20 of those who have registered say they can pay their own way.

Obviously, we’ll have many more people attending than that. We have a commitment to bring in about 10 from the Middle East and North Africa region. Even members of our Turkish steering committee have not registered to attend yet. So realistically, we have closer to 40-50 who will certainly attend. The biggest problem is going to be mobilizing a large turnout from Turkey.

Every day for the next two weeks I will doing what I can to build attendance. Here are some of the things I did today:

  • Wrote again to every national trade union center in the region, and to key partner NGOs we have worked with, re-inviting them and pointing out that they can now register online.
  • Wrote to the Turkish steering committee about these problems.
  • Wrote to LabourStart senior correspondents focussing on their regions, asking what we can do to build interest.
  • Make a list of another half-dozen ideas, including specific unions/countries/individuals to target.
  • Posted a reminder to Facebook event, which 286 people have said they will attend or might attend.  I will be following up with another mailing via Facebook to all of them, as well as regular updates to the event page.

I’ll keep you informed.  But for the moment, the number to watch is this one:

69

Written by admin in: 2011 conference |

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