Where trade unionists start their day on the net.
In this week's mailing:
* France on the brink
* Another victory: Banana workers in Costa Rica
* Online campaigning under threat
* Organizing McDonalds and Starbucks
* How to cope with a to-do list that never seems to get shorter
FRANCE ON THE BRINK
The mass protests involving hundreds of thousands of workers and students last week were only the beginning. With a general strike now scheduled for 28 March, France has been the focus of a lot of attention on LabourStart recently. We are updating throughout the day, and you'll find our complete coverage here:
http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/show_news.pl?country=France
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ANOTHER VICTORY: BANANA WORKERS IN COSTA RICA
Thanks to our online campaign and other efforts, we've won another victory. According to Banana Link,
"as a result of the LabourStart messages and a similar sized French urgent action campaign ... the company has finally been brought to the table after months of obstinate refusal and legal threats against the union (and
Banana Link)".
The company has agreed to reinstate the sacked trade union activist with full back pay, to give the union unimpeded access to plantations where it has members, to "instruct its staff and supervisers not to undertake
actions which could be regarded as an infringement of the trade union's freedom to operate in the company's plantations."
The campaign, we are told, "has had precisely the desired effect. SITRAP and SITAGAH have asked us to
convey their warm greetings, sincere thanks and appreciation of real international solidarity to all those who took part."
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ONLINE CAMPAIGNING UNDER THREAT
We can only do these campaigns if we can send out emails for free. If we need to pay for each email we send out, we won't be able to match the amount of money corporations can spend.
Right now, America Online (AOL) and other internet service providers are considering imposing charges on email sent to their subscribers. This is no problem for Wal-Mart and McDonalds -- but it is a problem for those of us fighting against Wal-Mart and McDonalds. We must bring pressure to bear to compell AOL and others to change their minds, and to keep email free.
This is why LabourStart was proud to join the AFL-CIO, the Communication Workers of America, the United Farm Workers, Working America, and American Rights at Work as one of the 50 original sponsoring organizations backing this call:
http://www.dearaol.com/
There are now over 500 groups will have endorsed this campaign -- is your union among them?
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ORGANIZING MCDONALDS AND STARBUCKS
Last week we urged all of you to send off messages in support of the heroic effort by a plucky New Zealand union to organize workers at McDonalds -- and we mentioned their high-profile strike at Starbucks as well.
We have been asked to clarify that (a) in several European and Latin American countries, strong union movements have succeeded in organizing McDonalds, and (b) in Canada, an effort was made to unionize Starbucks by the Canadian Auto Workers, leading to a well-publicized 'unstrike' back in 1999.
That having been said, McDonald's must surely be on the top of everyone's list who is concerned about the growth of the non-union, low-paid workforce -- which is why we all need to send off thousands more messages to McDonald's in New Zealand in support of the Super Size My Pay campaign:
http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=80
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HOW TO COPE WITH A TO-DO LIST THAT NEVER SEEMS TO GET SHORTER
I'll bet you know this feeling. You've made a list of things to do. You cross off ten things you've done. But your list is even longer than it was when you started. You feel like Sisyphus; you have no sense of progress being made.
The solution: keep a list of things you've done. There are a number of online diary tools and one we use every day is called iDailyDiary. You can read more about it and download it from here:
http://software.labourstart.org/idailydiary.shtml
iDailyDiary is freeware -- it costs absolutely nothing.
Thanks -- and have a great weekend.
Eric Lee
Texts appearing here are often press releases sent to us by unions and other organizations which do not appear elsewhere on the web. LabourStart takes no responsibility for their content.