Inside LabourStart

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.