This blog hasn’t been updated for the last five months (except for occasional updates on the numbers — thanks Derek!).  So one of our New Year’s Resolutions for 2024 is to fix that.  Over the next few days, we’ll do summaries of the major things that have been happening at LabourStart in the last few months — and from now on, we’ll update this blog on a much more regular basis.

The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the first day of September. Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since our last report.

Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in italics.  Lists or accounts which experienced growth are in bold.

 

MAILING LISTS:

The top 10:

English: 84014-83860

French: 7642-7586

German: 5957

Spanish: 5979-5550

Turkish: 4426

Korean: 3321-3320

Italian: 3117-3114

Russian: 2702

Norwegian: 2232-2196

Romanian:  1771

Dutch: 1536-1534

 

The others:

Arabic:  821

Belarusian:  293

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 902

Creole:  11

Czech: 61

Danish: 93

Esperanto: 190-188

Farsi:  207

Finnish:  476-475

Georgian:  156

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  295

Hindi:  80

Hungarian:  186

Indonesian:  460

Japanese: 398

Lithuanian:  63

Malaysian: 21

Polish: 970

Portuguese: 1292

Punjabi:  2

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15

Swedish: 950

Tagalog: 183

Thai:  152

Ukrainian: 493

Vietnamese:  21

Internal:

Executive and Interns:  14

LabourStart Correspondents:  677-672

LabourStart Translators:  97-91

Africa Caucus:  63

Media Contacts: 57

 

FLICKR:

Members:  840-839

Photos:  10233-10216

 

TELEGRAM:

LabourStart channel:  126-124

 

FACEBOOK PAGES/GROUPS:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.  Authority for the LabourStart Brasil page has been devolved to a volunteer in Brazil.

LabourStart.org page likes:  14071-13836

Global Labour News and Information: 9094-9026

LabourStart UK likes:  unavailable-2137

LabourStart Francophone: 607 (last post February 2021)

LabourStart-de: unavailable-500

LabourStart Brasil:  unavailable-552

LabourStart Turkce:  unavailable-2116

LabourStart TV likes: 457-443

LabourStart TV follows:  unavailable-454

LabourStart Vostok:  unavailable-119

LabourStart Esperanto:  unavailable-18

LabourStart Canada-English: 17 (new)

LabourStart Nepal:  7 (last post April 2017)

LabourStart Israel: CLOSED (last post 2018)

 

LINKEDIN:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Group: 2617-2603

Page: 274-263

 

X (TWITTER as-was):

A few months ago the Portuguese, Spanish and Canada-EN accounts were  devolved to volunteers in Brazil, Spain and Canada.  As a result changes to tweet frequency and format have been introduced.  This may have had an effect on our numbers.

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers for these accounts.

We experienced some decline in accounts that usually experience slow growth.  This may be the result of trade unionists closing their Twitter accounts and moving to other platforms (such as Mastodon).

 

Global English: 40123-40217

Canada English: 24923-23054

Global Portuguese: 10754-10828

Global Spanish: 10614-10601

Australia: 10342-10416

USA: 5103-5133

Canada French: 3325-3157

Russian: 47-48

Hebrew:  50 (last tweet 02-2021)

Italian: 508 (last tweet 11-2021)

Swedish: 329-330 (last tweet 2016)

Indonesia: 341 (last tweet 2015)

French: 224 (last tweet 2018)

German: 120 (last tweet 2018)

Japanese: 21 (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)

South Asia (English): 28-27 Placeholder and not yet active.

 

 

The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the first day of August. Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since last month.

Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in italics.  Lists or accounts which experienced growth are in bold.

It has been a slow summer campaigns-wise and so our lists have not grown a great deal.

 

MAILING LISTS:

The top 10:

English: 83860-83714

French: 7586

German: 5957

Spanish: 5550

Turkish: 4426-4412

Korean: 3320

Italian: 3114-3110

Russian: 2702

Norwegian: 2196-2193

Romanian:  1771

Dutch: 1534

The others:

Arabic:  821

Belarusian:  293

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 902-901

Creole:  11

Czech: 61

Danish: 93

Esperanto: 188

Farsi:  207

Finnish:  475

Georgian:  156

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  295

Hindi:  80

Hungarian:  186-183

Indonesian:  460

Japanese: 398

Lithuanian:  63

Malaysian: 21

Polish: 970

Portuguese: 1292-1291

Punjabi:  2

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15

Swedish: 950

Tagalog: 183

Thai:  152

Ukrainian: 493

Vietnamese:  21

Internal:

Executive and Interns:  12

LabourStart Correspondents:  672-669

LabourStart Translators:  91

Africa Caucus:  63

Media Contacts: 51

 

FLICKR:

Members:  839

Photos:  10216-10211

 

TELEGRAM:

LabourStart channel:  124-127

 

FACEBOOK PAGES/GROUPS:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.  Authority for the LabourStart Brasil page has been devolved to a volunteer in Brazil.

LabourStart.org page likes:  13836

Global Labour News and Information: 9026-8968

LabourStart UK likes:  unavailable-2137

LabourStart Francophone: 607 (last post February 2021)

LabourStart-de: unavailable-500

LabourStart Brasil:  unavailable-552

LabourStart Turkce:  unavailable-2116

LabourStart TV likes: 457-443

LabourStart TV follows:  unavailable-454

LabourStart Vostok:  unavailable-119

LabourStart Esperanto:  unavailable-18

LabourStart Nepal:  7 (last post April 2017)

LabourStart Israel: CLOSED (last post 2018)

 

LINKEDIN:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Group: 2603

Page: 263

 

X (TWITTER as-was):

A few months ago the Portuguese, Spanish and Canada-EN accounts were  devolved to volunteers in Brazil, Spain and Canada.  As a result changes to tweet frequency and format have been introduced.  This may have had an effect on our numbers.

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers for these accounts.

We experienced some decline in accounts that usually experience slow growth.  This may be the result of trade unionists closing their Twitter accounts and moving to other platforms (such as Mastodon).

 

Global English: 40217-40470

Canada English: 23054-23357

Global Portuguese: 10828-10986

Global Spanish: 106701-10738

Australia: 10416-10588

USA: 5133-5206

Canada French: 3157-3372

Russian: 48-47

Hebrew:  50-48 (last tweet 02-2021)

Italian: 508 (last tweet 11-2021)

Swedish: 330-335 (last tweet 2016)

Indonesia: 341 (last tweet 2015)

French: 224 (last tweet 2018)

German: 120 (last tweet 2018)

Japanese: 21 (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)

South Asia (English): 27 Placeholder and not yet active.

 

 

Due to some overseas travel and other issues, I’ve not been updating this blog — the last update was on 1 June.  So this will try to cover the last two months briefly.  I’ll try to keep the updates shorter and more frequent in future.

Campaigns:

• We just now launched a new campaign, together with PSI, in support of a jailed trade union leader in Mexico.  Translations are coming in and publicity happening.  After the first day, we have 2,750 supporters — a good start.
• We closed the Belarus and Georgia campaigns after three months.

Publicity:

• We’ve created the first version of a media list with a few dozen names.  All campaigns, events and conferences will now be sent to them.  Comrades with suggestions of who else should be on this list, please do let us know.
• We have reinvigorated our Instagram account (485 followers) and signed up for a Threads account.  We continue to grow our followings on Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn and Mastodon.
• We ran advertising campaigns on Facebook and Microsoft in support of our Belarus campaign, but they produced very disappointing results.

Next book:

• Some of the participants in our recent Global Solidarity Conference have sent in texts of their presentations.  We have about 9,000 words and will probably post this online and perhaps as a print booklet as well.  The texts need to be edited.

Donations:

• We received a very generous donation from the European Transport Workers Federation (ETF) and another from NUPGE in Canada.  In September we will resume our fundraising efforts.

 

 

Advertising: We had ad campaigns on both Microsoft and Facebook but with disappointing results, so both have been suspended.  We need to have a re-think about how we promote our Belarus campaign more effectively.

Arabic: We’ve migrated our Arabic language mailing list from Mailjet to a different provider, as Mailjet handled right-to-left languages quite poorly.  And we did our first Arabic language mailing for a long time — in support of the Belarus campaign.  Thank you Assaf for the translation!

Cambodia: We shared Eric Lee’s article about the jailing of a woman trade union leader — but so far we have not been asked to help with a campaign (we did reach out).  The Australian Council of Trade Unions already has an online campaign going.  The article was also posted by the Svensson Foundation in Norway.

Campaigns – Belarus: The campaign is now in Arabic.  The campaign has now also been translated into Polish, but we are awaiting the translation of the mass mailing as well.

Campaigns – Georgia: The Wolt campaign is now in Polish.  Waiting for the mass mailing text to be translated.

Fundraising: The last translated fundraising mailings have now gone out — to our Portuguese, Hungarian and Polish lists.  So far, the mailing went out in 12 languages, but unfortunately it has not yet been translated into German.

Global Solidarity Conference: The Georgian Trade Union Confederation released an excellent video which we’ve shared widely. We also wrote to all the conference participants asking those who spoke in plenaries or workshops to share their texts for a possible book.  (If we don’t publish a book, we will find a way to share the texts online.)

News: As we reported today across social media, LabourStart shared 17,109 news stories in the first five months of 2023 — that’s an average of 3,421 per month, or over 113 per day.  Thank you to all our volunteer correspondents!

The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the first day of March (NB: WE HAVE MISSED TWO MONTHLY REPORTS).  Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since last month.

Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in italics.  Lists or accounts which experienced growth are in bold.

MAILING LISTS:

The top 10:

English: 83714-83432

French: 7586-7546

German: 5957-5930

Spanish: 5550-5538

Turkish: 4412

Korean: 3320

Italian: 3110-3100

Russian: 2702-2690

Norwegian: 2193-2180

Romanian:  1771

Dutch: 1534-1527

The others:

Arabic:  821

Belarusian:  293-288

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 901

Creole:  11

Czech: 61-60

Danish: 93

Esperanto: 188-186

Farsi:  207

Finnish:  475-472

Georgian:  156-141

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  295-293

Hindi:  80

Hungarian:  183-180

Indonesian:  460

Japanese: 398

Lithuanian:  63

Malaysian: 21

Polish: 970-953

Portuguese: 1291-1290

Punjabi:  2

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15

Swedish: 950

Tagalog: 183

Thai:  152

Ukrainian: 493

Vietnamese:  21

Internal:

Executive and Interns:  12

LabourStart Correspondents:  669

LabourStart Translators:  91

Africa Caucus:  63

 

FLICKR:

Members:  839-838

Photos:  10211-10067

 

TELEGRAM:

LabourStart channel:  127-124

 

FACEBOOK PAGES/GROUPS:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.  Authority for the LabourStart Brasil page has been devolved to a volunteer in Brazil.

LabourStart.org page likes:  13836-13764

Global Labour News and Information: 8968-8944

LabourStart UK likes:  unavailable-2137

LabourStart Francophone: 607 (last post February 2021)

LabourStart-de: unavailable-500

LabourStart Brasil:  unavailable-552

LabourStart Turkce:  unavailable-2116

LabourStart TV likes: unavailable-443

LabourStart TV follows:  unavailable-454

LabourStart Vostok:  unavailable-119

LabourStart Esperanto:  unavailable-18

LabourStart Nepal:  7 (last post April 2017)

LabourStart Israel: CLOSED (last post 2018)

 

LINKEDIN:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Group: 2603-2600

Page: 263-249

 

TWITTER:

Since the last Numbers report the Portuguese, Spanish and Canada-EN accounts have been devolved to volunteers in Brazil, Spain and Canada.  As a result changes to tweet frequency and format have been introduced.  This may have had an effect on our numbers.

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers for these accounts.

We experienced some decline in accounts that usually experience slow growth.  This may be the result of trade unionists closing their Twitter accounts and moving to other platforms (such as Mastodon).

Global English: 40470-40479

Canada English: 23357-23493

Global Portuguese: 10986-11206

Global Spanish: 10738-10645

Australia: 10588-10658

USA: 5206-5251

Canada French: 3372-3267

Russian: 47

Hebrew:  48 (last tweet 02-2021)

Italian: 508 (last tweet 11-2021)

Swedish: 335 (last tweet 2016)

Indonesia: 341 (last tweet 2015)

French: 224 (last tweet 2018)

German: 120 (last tweet 2018)

Japanese: 21 (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)

South Asia (English): 22 Placeholder and not yet active.

 

 

In the last week …

Belarus campaign: We’ve launched an ad campaign on Facebook following a small one on Microsoft (1,716 views of the ad, 15 clicks, no new supporters added). The Facebook ads, after two days online, were shown 9,833 times and 218 people clicked on them. The campaign currently has 6,475 supporters. So far, only one new supporter has been added through this advertising campaign. The campaign has now been translated into Arabic. Significant publicity was given to the campaign at this week’s ETUC congress in Berlin, but only a very small number of delegates there signed up to support it.

Poland IKEA campaign: This campaign has now been suspended after three months online.  We have not yet heard back from Solidarnosc on this.

The LabourStart Global Solidarity Conference is now behind us.  There’s a summary of what happened here.

In addition, in the last four weeks …

• Mailing lists: We’ve had problems with right-to-left languages using MailJet.  We’ve now tested Hebrew on a new service and it seems to work well.  We’ll migrate our Arabic and Farsi lists there soon.
• Finances: The conference cost us considerably more than we were planning (unexpected costs for hiring the hall, interpretation equipment rental, etc) and we did a successful emergency fundraiser to cover those costs.
• Advertising: To publicise our Belarus campaign we’ve started our first paid advertising campaign in a very long time.  We are initially using Microsoft, but have also applied to use Facebook again.  That campaign is now up to 6,420 but it could be much higher.
• Georgia campaign: Just before the conference opened we launched a campaign in support of Wolt workers in Georgia.  Today it has 5,080 supporters.
• Upcoming campaigns: We are expecting campaign proposals shortly from unions in Namibia and Israel.

 

 

 

With a lot going on, ironically, this will have to be a very short summary of everything that’s happened so far in April.

Global Solidarity Conference:  With just 7 days to go, we have a packed schedule and 404 registrants from 80 countries.  Not all of those people will come, as many are experiencing difficulties getting visas, while others registered thinking that this was to be an online conference.  Nevertheless, we expect hundreds of attendees.

New campaign – Belarus: To mark one year since the crackdown on unions by the regime, we have launched a major campaign with the support of the Belarusian unions and global unions too.  In the first 24 hours online, the campaign picked up over 2,000 supporters and many translations have come in.

New campaign – Georgia: On the same day, we launched a campaign in supporting of striking couriers in Georgia.  This campaign coincides with our conference in Tbilisi so we expect to be able to do some on-the-ground, face-to-face solidarity.

Please do what you can to share and promote those campaigns — and see you in Tbilisi!

Global Solidarity Conference 2023

With just 4 weeks to go, the number of people registering to attend the conference is growing by the hour.

Right now, we have 252 registrants from 66 countries, and of those 219 are from outside Georgia.

It’s possible that some of those people will not received visas or the financial support they need to come, but we can already see that this will be a large conference.

Plus we have new confirmed plenary speakers and workshops.

Belarus: We closed our current campaign as we are planning to launch a new one shortly.

This campaign had 8,134 supporters and appeared in 17 languages.

Our comrades remain in jail.

Israel: We gave extensive coverage to the unprecedented general strike in Israel this week.

And we have just learned that two representatives of the Histadrut will be coming to our conference as well.