Inside LabourStart

Lesotho campaign: We went live this week with our new campaign in support of workers at Quantum Apparel.  After less than 24 hours online, the campaign had 1,317 supporters and translations have already started coming in — with French and Chinese first.

Correspondents: We picked up three new correspondents this week from Bangladesh, Malaysia and Pakistan.  We wrote to all our new correspondents who have not yet posted news, offering help, as we do every three months or so.  The good news is the majority of new correspondents are posting news.

Korea: We reached out to our Korean language mailing list to try to recruit helpers to translate our campaigns and mailings, and to post news.

Interns: The Global Labour University has reached out to us to take on another intern in 2026 and we are likely to do so.

Stats: Finally, we checked how many visitors our main website has had since the beginning of the year (this does not include visitors to the campaigns site, which is hosted separately).  The total is a healthy 579,245.

Brussels: Eric Lee spent three days in Brussels meeting with leaders and staffers at global and European trade union federations.  These included the ITUC, ETUC, Education International, International Federation of Journalists, IndustriAll Europe, EPSU, EFBWW, EFFAT and Equal Times (which is closing down in November after 13 years).

Among things discussed in all those meetings was cooperation on posting news (each global and European federation was asked to have its own volunteer LabourStart correspondent).  We also talked about possible campaigns and podcasts.  Several of the people liked the idea of using LabourStart podcasts as a shared platform.

We also discussed with ITUC and ETUC where and when their next congresses will take place (probably in Vienna and Barcelona in 2027) and how we can be involved.  In 2014, we piggy-backed on an ITUC congress in Berlin, which contributed to it being LabourStart’s largest global solidarity conference ever.

Podcasts: Though we didn’t release a new podcast last week, we discussed a number of upcoming possibilities including Gaza and Belarus.  Interestingly, while the number of downloads of our newest podcast (Chris Garlock) grew by a modest 24, the number of downloads of the BCGEU’s Paul Finch nearly doubled, from 250 to 455.

Campaigns: We have another new campaign which should go live today — in support of garment workers in Lesotho.  Stay tuned.

Chris Garlock – Labor Radio and Podcasting Network.

Podcasts: Last week I reported that our podcast interview with the BCGEU’s Paul Finch had 250 downloads; that has now nearly doubled to 443. Meanwhile, our interview with Chris Garlock of the Labor Radio and Podcasting Network already has 112 downloads. We resumed participating in regular weekly meetings of that Network, and are likely to share shows with them, making it easier for us to generate one new show each week.

Campaigns: Our Turkey campaign continues to grow, going from 4,100 last week to 4,475, a gain of over 9%. That campaign appears now in 16 languages. Meanwhile, our Sri Lanka campaign has grown considerably, up to 2,713 supporters; that campaign appears in 15 languages with two more on the way.

Translators: September 30th is designated by the United Nations every year as International Translation Day. It gives us an opportunity every year to send a message of special thanks to the dozens of volunteer translators who work so hard on our campaigns and mailings.

News: Meanwhile, our volunteer correspondents have started October with a bang – 278 news stories posted in the first two days (that’s almost one new story every 10 minutes).

Brussels: Eric Lee is heading off on Sunday morning for a two-day visit with trade union leaders in Brussels. Meetings are already scheduled at the ITUC, IFJ, Education International, ETUC, EPSU, EFFAT, EFBWW, IndustriAll Europe and Equal Times. We’ll report on results of those meetings next week.

We launch a new campaign in support of these garment workers in Turkey.

Podcasts: After a three month gap we are renewing our podcast series. We interviewed Paul Finch of the BCGEU in Canada — who is currently leading a major strike. In the first 12 hours online, the podcast was downloaded 250 times, which is excellent. We’re reaching out now to future interviewees. We’ve added donation and subcription options using Buzzsprout to encourage people to donate to LabourStart.

Turkey campaign: We launched a campaign against union-busting at Digel. It very quickly grew to more than 4,100 supporters in just four days, and translations currently appear in 13 languages with more on the way.

Sri Lanka campaign: This campaign has just 2,250 supporters, despite repeated reminders to lists and publicity across social media. It appears in 14 languages with more on the way.

Mailing lists: Our English list grew by 391 this week as we included campaign supporters. The other five lists we updated included just 27 new subscribers. For the first time, we have a mailing list in Sinhala.

News: Our volunteer correspondents have posted 2,937 news stories in the first 25 days of September, an average of over 117 per day, or one every 12 minutes.

Donations: For the first time, we’ve had a donation from the Canadian Labour Congress.

Belarus: Following the release of two jailed union leaders, we have now closed down our campaign. We expect to shortly interview Liza for our podcast series.

Belgium: Eric Lee will be travelling to Brussels in two weeks for meetings with senior figures in the global and European trade union movement.

Canada: We’ve had discussions with the BCGEU, currently on strike, about ways in which we can help, including a podcast interview with their president.

Sri Lanka: Our campaign in support of NEXT workers went live on Monday and has just under 2,000 supporters. It’s available in 12 languages, including Sinhala and Tamil.

Turkey: We expect to launch a new campaign in support of textile workers fighting against union-busting, possibly today.

Belarus: Some very good news – a couple of top trade union leaders and many other political prisoners have been released from jail. We’re shared the news widely on LabourStart and across social media and will probably be closing the campaign very soon.

Fundraising: Our September fundraiser took in £2,820.84 so far. Reminder mailings have not yet gone out.

New campaigns: We are about to launch new campaigns in support of clothing workers in Sri Lanka and Turkey.

Instagram: With the help of our new intern Joanne we are reviving this page, which has over 750 followers.

News: In the first 11 days of September, our volunteer correspondents posted 1,244 news stories, averaging over 113 per day.

Philippines Kawasaki campaign: The number of supporters jumps from 3,944 to over 5,000 this week, as campaign reminders go out and the campaign now appears in 18 languages. At the request of the union, we added a link to a GoFundMe page for the strikers, which doubles in one week from C$554 to C$1,129.

Korean language: We have translated the Kawasaki campaign and mass mailing, with additional text in the mailing to explain our long absence, thanks to translations done by our new intern, Joanne. A followup mailing is going out on Tuesday. One of our goals is to identify active supporters and get new translators for when we no longer have an intern.

LabourStart Executive: Two new members have joined — Mac Urata (Japan) and Lennon Wong (Taiwan).

Correspondents: We have a number of new correspondents, including one from Pakistan.

Mailing lists: Our lists grew by 244 this week, with 209 of those on the English list.

Fundraising: We did our annual Labo(u)r Day appeal, raising £1,764 in the first 3 days online. £1,510 of that came in the first 24 hours. The appeal then went out in 5 more languages, with more on the way.

Equal Times: We have heard that this online magazine, created by the ITUC in 2012, is shutting down. We’ve written to confirm and to offer our help — maybe LabourStart can play a role here.

August is almost over and with it the end of the long summer holidays that have largely shut down parts of the global trade union movement.

We expect a surge in activity from early next week, right after the Labo(u)r Day holiday in the US and Canada.

We’ll kick off next week with a major fundraising appeal focussing on recent victories that our campaigns helped contribute to, including in the Philippines and Turkey. (And we’ll probably also mention reports we’ve gotten about the effect of our recent campaign in Azerbaijan as well.)

And despite it being a relatively slow month for labour news, our volunteer correspondents posted 2,600 news stories in the first 28 days of the month, or 93 per day on average.

Philippines Kawasaki campaign: The campaign has been translated into nearly 20 languages with more on the way. After a week online, it has 3,994 supporters.

After one week online, we did a followup mailing to our 80,878 subscribers to the English list. We also re-shared the campaign across social media, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Blue Sky, X, WhatsApp and Telegram.

We checked our internal sources to make sure that messages are being delivered to the employer.

And, at the request of the union, we added a link to donate to their fund — it appears on the campaign page.

Interns: The first of our Cornell ILR interns, Joanne, started work this week. The second, Dylan, will begin work on Monday.

Sorry that we missed one week, so this covers the last 14 days.

Philippines Kawasaki campaign: This went live today with over 1,400 supporters in the first few hours and translations into four languages — including the highly relevant Tagalog and Japanese.

Sri Lanka Next campaign: We had a call last week to discuss the possibility of doing this and are waiting to hear back from partners before taking the next steps.

Turkey teachers campaign: This was a win. We will share the full statement we received from the union via the Education International in another week or so.

Interns: The first of our two interns from Cornell University will begin work on Monday. The second should start about a week later.

Campaigns: We now have a big and prominent link for our supporters to share our campaigns on WhatsApp. We hope that this will help a lot in regions where the instant messaging app is more used than email.

Donations: BWI made another very generous donation to us.

This report covers three weeks as I was away on holiday for one of those weeks.

Azerbaijan campaign: This campaign was closed after more than three months online. Here is what the union told us: “The campaign received widespread attention, going viral in the news and drawing significant public interest. It even reached state-level awareness, Sara Rahimova was questioned about it during her interrogation while in detention this past April.”

Turkey campaign: We closed down our campaign in support of teachers and are waiting for an update from the union.

Canada: Derek made a presentation (by Zoom) about LabourStart to a group of 14 – 18 year-olds at a trade union summer camp in New Brunswick. We also contributed to a campaign by the Ontario Federation of Labour to help convince the Canadian government to allow prominent South African trade union leader Jay Naidoo to remain in the country.

Interns: We’ve heard from a couple of our new interns, who will begin work at the end of this month.

Serbia: We’ve heard from the Union of Free Trade Unions of Serbia (SSSS) and are looking into ways to support them. More details soon.

Sri Lanka: We are in discussions about ways to help workers at a factory that has been closed. More details soon.

Donations: We’ve received a generous donation from PSI.  We are still waiting to hear back from two other global unions.