Aug
05
2016
0

New campaign launched in support of Ecuador’s teachers

At the request of the Education International we’ve launched a new campaign this week in support of Ecuador’s embattled teachers’ union.

The campaign is here: http://www.labourstart.org/go/une

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Aug
03
2016
0

We close our most popular campaign

Uktam Pardaev, fighter for human rights in Uzbekistan.

Uktam Pardaev, fighter for human rights in Uzbekistan.

Nearly four months after it was launched, yesterday we closed down our campaign in support of Uzbek human rights defender Uktam Pardaev.  The campaign, which ran in 15 languages, had the support of 10,474 trade unionists.  It was our largest current campaign and one of the rare ones to break the 10,000 mark.  We are currently waiting to hear what effect, if any, it had on the ground.

Meanwhile, our most popular current campaign is in support of UNI activist Orhan Akman who was deported from Peru.  That campaign is due to close in just a couple of days and has 7,632 supporters.  In a couple of weeks we’ll also be closing our campaign in support of forestry workers in Turkey, which currently has 6,676 supporters.

All the remaining campaigns have fewer supporters than these three.

So, how do we get campaigns to regularly have 10,000 or more supporters? Part of it has to do with the campaigns themselves.  Usually campaigns that focus on extreme violations of workers’ rights (such as the case of Pardaev in Uzbekistan) tend to attract more supporters than campaigns which focus on bread-and-butter issues such as disputes over collective bargaining and union recognition.  Nevertheless those campaigns, while not as popular, sometimes have a great effect on the ground.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Aug
01
2016
0

While I was away …

Eric with Bernie and Larry.

LabourStart editor Eric Lee meeting Bernie Sanders and Larry Sanders in Philadelphia.

I spent the last couple of weeks in the United States, mostly attending the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Nevertheless, I managed to do a few LabourStart tasks:

TURKEY:

Following the abortive military coup and the increase of repression, I contacted our comrades in Turkey as well as a couple of global union federations about a campaign. So far, there has not been any interest.

DISK did issue a statement, which we publicized widely. We’ve also given extensive publicity to statements issued by global unions about the situation in Turkey.

A request came in for another Turkey campaign, unrelated to the coup. However, it appears to be an internal union dispute, so we will not pursue this.

I followed up with the International Federation of Journalists, which has launched an online effort in support of Turkish journalists, and they are considering working with us on a campaign.

AFP campaign:

I sent out the campaign mailing in additional languages. I also added a link to the LabourRadio interview. I did a followup email to English list; the campaign had 4,289 supporters; the follow-up mailing went out to 74,008 people. As a result, the campaign now has 5,341, a gain of over 1,000 people. It remains, however, a small campaign.

SFI campaign:

At the request of BWI, we’ve launched another campaign in support of forestry workers in Malaysia. It has 3,367 supporters as of today and appears in 9 languages with more coming. Our mailing also promoted the IUF’s current campaign on India, which has received a boost due to our effort. I publicized this campaign on Facebook and Twitter and sent out mailings promoting it in a number of languages.

Uzbekistan campaign:

As three months have now passed, I’d asked for permission to close this down. It’s our largest current campaign with well over 10,000 supporters.

USA:

I offered LabourStart’s help with a Philadelphia airport workers campaign. The strike however was settled on the eve of the Democratic Convention.

I’ve informed the Workers Independent News Service that I’ll not be submitting additional “Working World” broadcasts as I did for several months this year.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |

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