Inside LabourStart

Klout is a service that attempts to measure how much influence an organization or individual has based on a complex algorithm linked to their presence on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. It’s been getting a lot of publicity lately – here’s one example, from Wired.

Klout claims to measure the following:

• True Reach: How many people you influence
• Amplification: How much you influence them
• Network Impact: The influence of your network

Klout makes it relatively easy to look at unions, as they have a specific “labor” category.

Klout gives sites a rating from 0 – 100.  The average rating is around 20.  All the union websites we looked at rated higher.

Here are a random selection of a couple of dozen union sites from the USA. Canada, Australia, Ireland, Germany and global – note that LabourStart’s ranking is actually quite high.

1. AFL-CIO (USA) 70
2. SEIU (USA and Canada) 67
3. Working America (USA) 66
4. UNISON (UK) 62
5. PCS (UK) 61
6. UnionPlus (USA) 60
7. Unite (UK) 58
8. LabourStart 56 (click on the link to see more details)
9. CUPE (Canada) 55
10. ACTU Rights at Work (Australia) 51
11. UFCW (USA and Canada) 50
12. TUC Global (UK) 49
13. ITUC 49
14. IG Metall (Germany) 47
15. IWW (46)
16. CAW (Canada) 46
17. UNI Global Union 45
18. DGB (Germany) 44
19. Australian Workers Union (Austalia) 42
20. ETUC (Europe) 41
21. SIPTU (Ireland) 37
22. IFJ 29
23. IMF 27
24. IUF 21

The ITUC has issued its annual report on the violations of trade union rights.   It’s important that we do all we can to promote this — in all our languages and in all countries.  Here are some of the things I’m doing today:

• Promoting this in a LabourStart mass mailing later today
• Posted it to the LabourStart page on Facebook
• Posted it as a tweet – as LabourStart
• Posted it on UnionBook – and then automatically through my personal account to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

Other correspondents have already made sure it’s a top news story on LabourStart today.

What have you done?

Yesterday, according to .net magazine, Twitter unveiled a ‘Follow’ button.  Today, it’s on LabourStart (upper left corner):

It’s also on our campaigns – both on the initial campaign page, and on the page you see after you complete sending off a message.

Note the number of followers – hopefully, this will grow.

Here are the totals with the last month in brackets:
—
Mailing lists (with over 100 members)
English: 56.584 [56,950]
Norwegian: 2,759 [2,760]
French: 2,481 [2,462]
Spanish: 1,532 [1,614]
German: 839 [854]
Turkish: 689
Italian: 526
Russian: 493
Polish: 302
Portuguese: 252
Chinese: 243
Dutch: 234
Finnish: 178

—
Social networks
UnionBook 2.0 – members: 3,593 [3,503]
Facebook –
Members of LabourStart group: 4,369 [4,332]
Like LabourStart.org page 962 [120]
Twitter – followers: 3,469 [3,269]
Union group on Flickr: 637 [635]
LinkedIn – members of LabourStart group: 334 [318]
—
Website
Correspondents: 866 [865]
Unique visits to the site this month: 532,236 [509,194]
Page views this month: 1,245,761 [1,291,153]
Popular language home pages (last month in brackets):
* English 49,471 [45,959]
Our web host (1&1 Internet) no longer provides details beyond the 30 most popular pages, and none of the other language pages are in this category.

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

Mailing lists – subscribers: 76,177 [+3,774]
LabourStart’s English language mailing list: 63,403 60,240 [+3,163]

Unique visits to the site this month: 466,615 540,582 (-73,967)
Page views this month: 1,318,172 (-209,368)

Popular language home pages (last month in brackets):

* English 41,236 (44,183)
* French 5,707 (5,084)
* Norwegian 5,306 (5,033)
* Finnish 2,281 (2,121)
* Polish 1,670 (2,016)
* Russian 1,340 (1,851)
* Dutch 1,232 (1,523)

UnionBook 2.0 – members: 3,379 [+285]
Facebook – members of LabourStart group: 4,313 [+163]
Twitter – followers: 3,114 [+202]
Correspondents: 855 [+11]
Union group on Flickr: 617 [+22]
LinkedIn – members of LabourStart group: 300 [+24]

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

Norwegian 2,753 [+10]
French 2,452 [+67]
Spanish 1,591 [+303]
German 854 [+8]
Turkish 694 [+179]
Italian 538 [+6]
Russian 498 [+3]
Polish 303 [no change]
Portuguese 253 [+11]
Chinese 245 [+1]
Dutch 236 [no change]
Swedish 228 [+3]

We’ve just closed down the campaign in support of jailed teacher trade unionist Rosalba Gaviria Toro, which generated 3,590 messages of protest.  Natasha Morgan of Justice for Colombia wrote to say: “Labour Start has really boosted the campaign, and it would be excellent to work with you again in the future.”

We’ve found a better way than Twitfeed to automatically update LabourStart’s tweets.  We now use Tweetlive for this purpose.  At present we have 3,027 followers, a gain of 25% in the last six months with some 600 new followers.

We now have a newswire for British Columbia; this was requested by someone who designs and manages websites for unions there.

All the email addresses we collected in our first annual survey of global trade union use of the net have now been added to our mailing lists.

Here are our top current campaigns – all of them launched within the last month – in order of popularity:

• 4,617 Bangladesh: Free Moshrefa Mishu (20 Jan)
• 3,346  Mexico: Defend trade union rights (10 Feb)
• 2,554 Turkey: Reform labour laws now (26 Jan)
• 2,385 Philippines: Dole must respect union rights (16 Feb)
• 2,332 Pakistan: Reinstate sacked trade union leader at Syngenta (9 Feb)
• 1,683 Turkey: Polyplex must reinstate sacked workers, negotiate with union (9 Feb)