Inside LabourStart

LabourStart’s new intern started work today — his name is Tom Harris.  Tom’s email is tom [at] labourstart.org.

Today we had a meeting of LabourStart’s Russian and Ukrainian correspondents — and potential correspondents — in the new workers’ advice centre in Kiev.  The meeting was hosted by the Solidarity Center in Kiev and organized by Masha Kurzina (left).  Over the course of about 6 hours, we went over all the different things LabourStart does and talked honestly about what we can do to strengthen our campaigns, grow our mailing list, improve our news, and so on in the countries of the former Soviet Union.  We also discussed the possibility of a rather large contingent of trade unionists from Russia and Ukraine attending our Global Solidarity Conference in May next year.  All in all, an exciting and inspiring event — and perhaps a model for what we can try in other countries.

I’ll be in Kiev this week to attend this important conference, and am happy that in addition to this event, we’re holding a special event for LabourStart correspondents from the region on Friday this week there as well.  We have between 27 – 35 correspondents from Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere already signed up.  And the conference organizers have even pulled together a LabourStart concert for Sunday evening featuring the Russian socialist band, Arkady Kos (details here).  Expect a full report next week.

Meanwhile, Edd has compiled a fantastic report which I’ve titled 10 Years of LabourStart campaigns in support of workers’ struggles in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Georgia – 2003-2013.

We’ve been invited to speak at a national meeting of Steelworkers staff in Toronto in December. I think this is a result of this union having used us fairly frequently over the past couple of years and their apparently high level of satisfaction with the results.

This is an important union here. I am very pleased at the invitation, especially so since it comes as a surprise.

-Derek Blackadder

Something I’ve been meaning to mention for a while: the Canadian Twitter feeds (more the English than the French) have not only been steadily growing in popularity since they were introduced, but we get a fair bit of positive feedback about them. Our tweets are regularly RT’d by the accounts in the names of national union leaders and we are often asked to tweet re. events (strikes, conferences etc.). And for particularly important events I get calls from union communication staff asking me to make sure that we tweet about the event as it happens.

Aside from the free food and t-shirts attending union events so I can tweet about it gets me, this provides LabourStart with a fair bit of attention.

It’s not a lot of work to use Hootsuite (or something similar) to start a feed that regularly tweets without any direct input from you. If anyone wants to start one for your country I’d be happy to help.

– Derek Blackadder

I’ve been asked to speak about LabourStart’s experiences with online campaigning at the national communicators conference that UFCW holds every few years. I’ve done this in the past and they are still one of our largest donors here in Canada. 🙂

I have a standard presentation that I modify for each such presentation so if anyone else is doing or thinking about doing something similar and would like to use it or parts of it just let me know and I can send it along. These kind of events are, I think, very good for us.

– Derek Blackadder

I was away from London for 6 days, just returned this morning to a very full Inbox and To-Do List.  I appreciate everyone’s patience, as I’ve been away for 24 days out of the last 35.  At the moment, I have no plans to go anywhere — at least until the end of September — so I should be able to catch up …

— Eric Lee

A few minutes ago the global English-language Twitter account passed the 10,000 followers mark.

We’ve run online actions on behalf of the Canadian wing of the United Steelworkers on a couple of occasions. Here’s their media release on the current campaign.

And here’s a follow-up.

We ran a campaign for about a week on behalf of SEIU members at a chain of funeral homes in Toronto. The campaign was Canada-only, so not many of you will have noticed it. Here’s a thank-you recieved on Frioday, along with a request to close the campaign:

Thank you to our supporters!!!!

SCI (Delmoro Funeral Home) employees and members of SEIU would like to send a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you that supported us in such a difficult process, because of you, THE SUPPORTERS you made it easier knowing we had the following of such a great bunch of people. It’s nice to know that there are still people that care. We would have never made it through this whole ordeal without you and for that WE THANK YOU VERY MUCH. SEIU makes me proud to be a member!!!!

Sincerely

Ama Gallucci
and the members of SEIU!!!!!

Special thanks to Andy for the translation work on the campaign.