Where trade unionists start their day on the net.
In this week's mailing:
* How to use Google to put pressure on a company
* Musicians causing trouble? Sack the orchestra and break the union
* "Left Front" government attacks protesting workers
* Results of home page survey
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HOW TO USE GOOGLE TO PUT PRESSURE ON A COMPANY
If you live in Britain and you search Google this week for the website of the country's largest retailer, Tesco, you'll see the link to the company's website on top of the left side of the page. If you look over to the right side, you'll see the following text: "Child labour: The latest union news from around the world, updated 24/7". Below that is a link to LabourStart. The ad appears because it was recently revealed that Tesco uses child labour in Bangladesh to make its cheap clothing line.
If you live anywhere in the world and search for the world's largest fruit company, Dole, you'll see on top of the right side of the Google results page this text: "Dole busts unions. Get the facts and tell the company what you think." Below is a link to our campaign in support of Dole banana workers.
Companies and governments hate when we do this. But because we pay Google to run these ads, there is little they can do about it. It means that every time people search for "Dole" or "Tesco" they may learn a little something that the companies didn't want them to know.
In the last seven days, we have displayed over 1,000,000 such ads on Google. These have been highly effective in increasing support for our campaigns, introducing new people to LabourStart, and embarrassing companies that need to be embarrassed.
But they cost money -- and we need your help. Please donate $25.00 today:
http://www.labourstart.org/donate.shtml
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MUSICIANS CAUSING TROUBLE? SACK THE ORCHESTRA AND BREAK THE UNION
We've had an unusual appeal this week from the musicians union in Chile. The management of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Santiago has sacked all union members in an effort to break the union. They are appealing for messages from around the world. Please take a moment and send off your message today:
http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=151
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"LEFT FRONT" GOVERNMENT ATTACKS PROTESTING WORKERS
The agricultural workers union in India has called for worldwide protest against the violent assault recently launched by the government of the state of West Bengal. That government, controlled by the "Left Front", has signed a deal with a multinational corporation to build a factory which will destroy the livelihood of local farmers. Their protest was met by brutal repression and one protestor was killed. Read more and send off your message here:
http://www.iufdocuments.org/cgi-bin/dbman/db.cgi?db=default&uid=default&ID=3780&view_records=1&ww=1&en=1
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RESULTS OF HOME PAGE SURVEY
Thanks very much to the more than 500 of you who responded to last week's survey. Some highlights:
* More than 85% of you don't use a union website or LabourStart as your home pages on the net. In fact, more of you use Google as your homepage than any other. Other search engines are popular, as are your employer's home page or the local intranet.
* Nearly one in five of you admitted to not actually knowing how to change your home page. (We explained how to do this.)
* Thanks for the many hundreds of suggestions for ways we can improve LabourStart. Stay tuned to see us adopt many of them in the weeks to come.
If you want to make LabouStart your home page, full instructions are here:
http://www.labourstart.org/docs/en/000372.html
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.