Dec
31
2018
0

Final update for 2018: A setback in Hungary ends a year of activism

I thought I’d get off an update before 2018 ends. Here’s what we’ve been up to for the last 12 days:

Cambodia: We publicised the story about 95 NGOs condemning convictions of union leaders in Cambodia, sharing it widely on social media and as a top global news story on LabourStart.

Canada: Our CUPW campaign got a boost, in part due to the Hungary mailing (see below), picking up 653 new supporters in the last week, and becoming our largest active campaign. It currently has 8,412 supporters and we may be able to push this up to 10,000.

China: A new campaign has been suggested to us; we’re waiting to see if a partner can be found.

Global: Today, we shared the IFJ’s news report about 94 journalists being killed this year both as a top global news story on LabourStart, and across social media.

Hungary: We closed our campaign eight days ago, after the President signed the “slave law”. The campaign was only live for five days, got 7,288 supporters, and appeared in 13 languages. The Hungarian unions gave us a text to use to sum up what happened. We followed this with a mass mailing to all our lists reporting on this setback (because we make a point of being honest and transparent, and we share good news and bad). The mailing encouraged people to support our other active campaigns, to follow us on social media, and to donate — two days before Christmas. Because of that, response rates were low.

India: We shared a story about the 30,000 strong farmers’ “long march” as a top global news story, and on social media, as well as making it our photo of the week. We did the same with a story about a hunger strike by Indian teachers.

Philippines: We shared a story about a protest camp story as a top global news story and across social media.

UK: We supported the TUC’s campaign in support of restaurant workers at TGIF with a mass mailing to our UK list.

Zimbabwe: We promoted our Zimbabwe news page with its stories about the hospital strike as a top global story and across social media.

Correspondents & Translators: We wrote an end of year message to all correspondents and translators – especially to encourage inactive correspondents to contribute again, and to encourage inactive translators for specific languages to get involved again. In that message I was able to point out some interesting (to me) numbers:

As of today, our correspondents have posted over 45,000 news stories this year on LabourStart. That’s 124 stories every day, on average.

There were a total of 107 active correspondents this year, posting about 421 stories each, more than one every day.

LabourStart’s news is read by tens of thousands of trade unionists. This year we had 791,732 visitors to the web site. Many trade unionists depend on LabourStart to keep them up to date with what is in happening in the international trade union movement.

Internationalisation: We fixed the home page in French to work like the one in English, which means that Canadian stories no longer dominate the top of the page.

Mailing lists: In an end of year boost, we added 672 new subscribers to our lists – most in English and Russian.

Dec
19
2018
0

Victories in Turkey, Malaysia as we launch three new campaigns this month

It’s been a very busy month — with some good news to report (see especially Malaysia and Turkey) and three new campaigns this month (Canada, Hungary, Iran). Here’s a quick summary of what we’ve been up to in the run-up to Christmas …

Bangladesh: We do a mailing to our English list to promote an IUF campaign in this country.

Belarus: We had some issues with our news page in Belarusian, but have resolved most of these.

Brazil: We publicise widely the story of a complaint global unions are making to the ILO.

Canada: At the request of the postal workers union (CUPW) we launch a global campaign supporting their struggle. As of today it has 6,588 supporters.
Earlier in the month, we do one mailing to our Canadian list.

China: We give extensive publicity to a Human Rights Watch report on China.

Europe: We gave extensive coverage — and not for the first time — of Amazon workers strikes in Spain and Germany.

Germany: We continue attempts to revive our dormant Twitter account with regular postings and following many more trade union and other Twitter feeds; we’ve seen some growth.
Meanwhile, our German translators have become active again and we did our first mailing in German in three months.

Global: We give extensive publicity to the ITUC congress and its “worst boss” poll.

Hungary: At the request of the Hungarian Trade Union Confederation we launch a campaign on 18 December; within 24 hours it nearly reaches 5,000 supporters.

India: An e-newsletter called ‘Life of Labour’ sums up the best sources of workers’ news online and writes this: “Labourstart is an international online news aggregator, with the tagline ‘Where trade unionists start their day on the net’. It’s run through volunteer correspondents from across the world. It shares links to news on workers and worker related developments published in over 20 languages, while also running online campaigns of various trade unions and international federations of workers’ organisations. It has been providing this service for over two decades.”

Iran: We launch a new campaign in support of jailed teachers at the request of the Education International; the campaign currently has 6,983 supporters. We closed the Mohammed Habibi campaign; it had 10,855 supporters and appeared in 20 languages.
We also share a story about Iran arresting steel workers on social media.
We promoted widely an IUF story on Iran as well.

Kazakhstan: We continued posting new translations of our campaign. It had 7,704 supporters by today.

Korea: We shared a mass street demo story widely on social media.

Malaysia: We heard back from BWI global union about a campaign we ran more than two years ago. Here’s part of what they told us: “I know that Labourstart covered it on the website, but I just wanted to get in touch again and extend personal thanks to you for your assistance on the long-running Sabah Forest Industries (SFI) dispute. The successful secret ballot outcome has been a huge confidence booster for the union; it was previously down to just one site and struggling for dear life to hold on. They have now won secret ballots in a few other sites and are actively recruiting in quite a few more; in short, they’ve been able to turn the corner and are now growing stronger and stronger! I know that international support has been a major factor in keeping them going. SFI is still proving to be a battle (the company is teetering on financial meltdown and the buyers are playing games) but there is a newfound vitality.”

Myanmar: We gave extensive coverage to the IUF’s story about the hotel workers’ protest camp.

Norway: We share news about the Svensson Prize (which is accepting nominees for next year’s award) with our English and Norwegian mailing lists.

Poland: We’ve resumed translations of campaigns and have done our first mailings to our Polish list since January 2016 — nearly three years.

Sweden: We have 7 new translators and our campaigns are doing well, and our list is growing again.

Thailand: We continued posting new translations of our Mitsubishi Electric campaign. It had 7,384 supporters by today.

Turkey: Following our campaign, we were able to announce a victory for the Istanbul airport workers. A special mailing was sent out to all our lists about this. It included this statement from the union: “The first hearing of workers, who staged a protest against their bad working conditions and occupational murders in the construction of the New Airport in ?stanbul was held on December 5th. The hearing was held in the dining hall of the courthouse due to the low capacity of the courtrooms. The court ruled that workers shall be released on probation. The next hearing will be on March 20, 2019. Özgür Karabulut, President of Progressive Union of Construction Workers is free now. He will be able to witness the birth of his daughter. And he will be back in his duties in the workers’ movement. There will be a long-term struggle for improving the OHS conditions of airport workers. Thanks to all sisters and brothers who supported our campaign for their freedom and who contributed visibility of working conditions at Istanbul Airport.”

UK: At the request of the TUC and the journalists’ union (NUJ) we publicise a campaign of theirs to our UK mailing list and our UK Facebook page.
We give extensive publicity to the Uber workers court victory – a win for all workers in the ‘gig economy’.

Ukraine: We gave extensive publicity to a story about a miners’ struggle.

News database: We’ve contacted our hosting company about expanding the size of our database, as our news database is constantly growing and we keep reaching our limits.
We fixed a problem for some languages where stories tagged as top global priorities were not appearing anywhere.
We fixed a problem which would happen when a correspondent would change their default country or language.

Working women: We’ve developed a prototype of a fully multilingual version of our news page. It will go live soon.

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