Inside LabourStart

I’ll be in Geneva all this week doing some work for the IMF and IUF.

I should have access to email, but please only contact me in case of emergency.

Here are the totals with the changes since the end of August in brackets:

Mailing lists – subscribers: 68,694 [-163]
LabourStart’s English language mailing list: 57,911 [-39]
Absolute unique visitors according to Google: 22,997 [-7,156]
UnionBook 2.0 – members: 1,792 [+600]
Facebook – members of LabourStart group: 3,669 [+57]
Twitter – followers: 2,526 [+112]
Correspondents: 812 [+9]
Union group on Flickr: 574 [+10]
LinkedIn – members of LabourStart group: 201 [+2]

Some highlights from the mailing lists — the other large groups are:

Norwegian 2,716 [no change]
French 2,168 [+6]
Spanish 1,211 [+2]
German 801 [+3]
Italian 518 [no change]
Russian 445 [+4]
Turkish 453 [+18]
Polish 305 [+1]
Portuguese 238 [no change]
Dutch 233 [+3]
Swedish 230 [+1]
Chinese 183 [+2]
Danish 162 [no change]

The ad campaign on Facebook has given UnionBook the kind of exposure you can only pay for  … and we are paying for it.  In the last day and a half or so, since our ads went live, they’ve been shown over 300,000 times.  A small number of people have clicked through (87 so far) and we only pay for those.  One result of all this is that we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of new users of UnionBook.  We now have over 1,500 users of the site, 127 of whom joined in the last day and a half.

Today we switched the domain name so that http://www.unionbook.org points to the new site.  The old site can be found at http://www.unionbook.org.uk — but this is causing problems and people cannot access the old site.  We’ll try to have that fixed by the weekend.

A colleague of ours, Walton Pantland (email: waltonp@gmail.com) who works for the British union UNITE, is doing research into how trade unions and their members are using new technologies for organising and has asked me to ask you to fill in his online survey.  You can also visit his CyberUnions blog here.

Steve Jobs of Apple

This is starting to appear all over the net.

UPDATE: Fortune is now running with this story.  There’s also a version on PCPro, the website of a very important print magazine in the UK.  Versions are appearing in different languages including German, French, Italian and Chinese.

I first read about it on “App Advice” which wrote that “the conversation began with Jay’s forwarding of a LabourStart campaign email, which included the message” — and then goes on to quote our campaign.

They apparently picked up the story from “MacStories” — which actually includes a link to LabourStart in its article, as well a screen shot of our email message about the Foxconn campaign.

I wrote to Jobs myself yesterday, as did Derek Blackadder, and we’ll let you know here if he responds.

With 6,161 participants after just a week, our campaign protesting the Iranian regime’s murder of teacher trade unionist Farzad Kamangar is one of our largest ever.

By comparison, here are the current totals of other currently active campaigns and their launch dates:

• Philippines – Alta Mode: 3,159 (26 April)
• Taiwan – YFO: 3,906 (21 April)
• Iraq – Oil union: 2,954 (12 April)
• Mexico – PEMEX: 4,247 (14 March)
• Guyana – Bauxite: 2,645 (12 March)
• Mexico – Cananea: 3,795 (2 March)
• Turkey – Seher Tumer: 4,233 (26 February)
• Thailand – Railway workers: 4,039 (8 February – overdue for removal)

Farzad Kamangar.

We learned about this yesterday evening (Sunday) and I want to use this page to update you on what we have done.

As you may recall, back in November 2008 we launched an online campaign appealing to the Iranian president to not execute this teacher trade unionist.  As we wrote then, “Kamangar, aged 33, was sentenced to death by the Iranian Revolutionary Court on 25 February 2008 after a trial which took place in secret, lasted only minutes, and failed to meet Iranian and international standards of fairness. His lawyer, Kahlil Bahramian, said: ‘Nothing in Kamangar’s judicial files and records demonstrates any links to the charges brought against him.’ Indeed, Kamangar was initially cleared of all charges during the investigation process. Education International, the International Trade Union Confederation, the International Transport Workers Federation, Amnesty International and LabourStart are appealing to the Iranian authorities to commute the death sentence and ensure his case is reviewed fairly.”

But he and several others have now been hanged.

• Sunday: Wrote to key players in the ITUC, TUC, Amnesty and elsewhere and exchanged emails with a number of them  about protests at Iranian embassies, etc.
• Monday: Added a large number of news stories, including one top story, to LabourStart today.
• Monday: Sent out a tweet, updated Facebook status and the wire on UnionBook with the news.
• Monday: Sent a reminder to the key players (see above) that LabourStart is ready and willing to launch an online campaign.
• Tuesday: Still no online campaign launched by ITUC, EI or Amnesty.  I write to all the relevant players yet again suggesting that one of them take responsibility to give LabourStart the details we need to launch an online campaign today.  The ITF and the British TUC strongly support this, but we’re waiting for the others.
• Tuesday: Our campaign goes live at 16:04 London time.  Publicity includes a mailing to our Facebook group (over 3,000 members), to the English language mailing list (over 55,000), and via Twitter, UnionBook, etc.  Our volunteer translators in a dozen languages are working on it…
• Tuesday: This may be a new record.  French campaign went live at 16:58, 54 minutes after the English one.
• Tuesday: After one hour, 114 messages sent.

Here is the video and here is the text of my notes in English. (The Turkish language version is here.)

Networked union communications: The LabourStart experience

(more…)

Now online, here.

Derek Blackadder and Eric Lee are scheduled to do three appearances at Canadian union events between now and our conference in July.

Eric has been invited to speak at the Canadian Association of Labour Media (CALM)/LabourTech event in Windsor on 13-16 May (Derek as well).

Derek has been invited to speak on LabourStart’s behalf to conferences in Toronto and Halifax.