The state of our campaigns
At the moment we’re running seven campaigns at once — this is quite a lot for us — and they differ wildly in the number of messages sent. Here are the campaigns, the number of messages sent, and when they were launched — in order of popularity:
- Iran: Farzad Kamangar executed – 6,608 (11.5)
- China: Foxconn suicides – 5,411 (28.5)
- Taiwan: Touch panel workers – 4,043 (21.4)
- Algeria: Union HQ shut down – 2,668 (25.5)
- Iraq: Minister closes union offices – 2,554 (23.7)
- South Africa: Dis-Chem strike – 1,831 (9.6)
- Turkey: Free jailed trade unionists – 1,560 (2.7)
Some quick observations:
- Deaths of workers prompt larger responses in campaigns. The top two campaigns are both attempts to prevent further deaths (and executions, in the case of Iran) and it’s not surprising that they are the largest campaigns.
- Campaigns that seem to be unending, or continuations of previous campaigns under a new guise, do poorly — hence the poor response to the Turkish campaign which follows several others on the same theme.
- Campaigns that seem to solely focus on ordinary bread-and-butter disputes (such as the South African Dis-Chem dispute) don’t do as well as those that focus on workers’ rights issues.
- Finally, we have to take into account that effective partners make for successful campaigns — there is no doubt that we have been helped on the China and Taiwan campaigns with energetic support from unions in the region, whereas the Dis-Chem campaign has attracted the support of only 15 people in South Africa (more than 99% of the support comes from outside the country). In the Taiwan campaign, close to 240 of the supporters come from China and Taiwan.
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