Inside LabourStart

We went live in a big way this week with our new Serbia campaign and it shot up to 3,174 supporters after just a week online. There was an initial surge of support thanks to the ETF. We expect many more to sign up as the translations go live and we do our followup to the English list as well.

Our Lesotho campaign continued to grow, but at a much slower pace, picking up just 137 new supporters this week.

One of the global unions is exploring the possibility of another Serbia campaign soon. When I pointed out that this would be our third Serbia campaign in less than a year, I was told why that was happening.

Ranko and Igor from the Serbian air traffic controllers union.

We recorded and released another podcast today, having interviewed the two Serbian union leaders who were recently sacked after leading a successful strike. We expect this podcast, like the campaign itself, to pick up lots of interest in the coming days.

Meanwhile our new home page, which includes the prominent positioning of today’s news, has moved from being just on the English page to another 20 languages. Soon all our language sites will be using it. This is leading to the discovery of many small issues with those pages which are being systematically fixed.

I did promise last week not to get all obsessive about our numbers, but couldn’t resist sharing this one: the labourstart.org website (not including the campaigns) had 100,763 visitors in October, and the month isn’t over yet.

Last week we reported on the launch of our Lesotho campaign, which had 1,317 supporters and was appearing in three languages.  Today, that campaign has more than doubled in size, to 2,854 supporters, and appears in 11 languages.  In addition, we recorded a podcast interview with the General Secretary of UNITE yesterday.

Today we are launching a new campaign in support of the air traffic controllers union in Serbia, whose leaders have been unfairly sacked from their jobs.  That campaign has been launched at the request of the European Transport Workers Federation.

Last weekend, all of our campaigns were briefly offline as our hosting company migrated to new servers.

We’ve done some work a new home page for LabourStart.  Initially in English only, and not yet live, the main change is that news stories that used to be hidden at the bottom of the page are now right on top, where everyone can see them, in the middle column of the page.

We’ve heard from the Global Labour University and expect to soon begin interviewing prospective interns for the spring of 2026.

Our mailing lists continue to grow.  This week, we picked up 205 more subscribers to the English list and 149 for the Turkish list — these are supporters of our new campaigns who have opted-in to be on our lists.

And finally, I won’t do this regularly but … after initially reporting on our stats last week, I thought I’d have another look.  It looks like LabourStart (not counting the campaigns — just the news pages) had 24,107 visitors this week.

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.