Inside LabourStart

As the crisis at Twitter deepens, many people have begun to use alternatives — most notably, Mastodon.  Our account there, which has been live for just two weeks, has 144 followers and is growing every day.

This week we announced on social media and in a mailing to the English list that we’d be hosting a webinar today (Friday, 2.12) to introduce Mastodon to trade unionists.  We’ve gotten Tim Wilde, the founder of The Union Place server on Mastodon, to join us on the panel.  Over 225 people from 44 countries — including nearly all the global unions — have signed up to participate.  The webinar is being recorded and we will make it available on the weekend.

In order to pre-register people, we had to create a signup page and a small database, which was done.  This tool can now be easily modified and recycled for other events, both online and offline.  We’ve been tweaking and improving LabourStart’s back end every day this week and continue to plough through a very long list of changes that need to be made to the site.  It’s a slow process but we are moving forward again.

Meanwhile, we’re waiting to hear back from our partners in Georgia about our planned Global Solidarity Conference there in April.  Once we have spoken to them we should have some more news.

 

 

There was no report for 1 November so the prior totals are all those current on 1 October.

The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the first day of last month.  Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since last month.

Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in italics.  Lists or accounts which experienced growth are in bold.

 

MAILING LISTS:

The top 10:

English: 82457

French: 7523-7490

German: 5842-5796

Spanish: 5505

Turkish: 4169

Korean: 3320-3311

Italian: 3095-3091

Russian: 2690-2686

Norwegian: 2161-2142

Romanian:  1771

Dutch: 1502-1492

The others:

Arabic:  821

Belarusian:  288

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 901-899

Creole:  11

Czech: 60

Danish: 93-92

Esperanto: 182-180

Farsi:  207

Finnish:  472-469

Georgian:  141-135

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  293-292

Hindi:  80

Hungarian:  180-179

Indonesian:  460

Japanese: 398

Lithuanian:  63

Malaysian: 21

Polish: 842

Portuguese: 1290-1287

Punjabi:  2

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15

Swedish: 950-947

Tagalog: 183-159

Thai:  152

Ukrainian: 493-487

Vietnamese:  21

Internal:

Executive and Interns:  12

LabourStart Correspondents:  666-665

LabourStart Translators:  91-87

Africa Caucus:  63

 

FLICKR:

Members:  839-837

Photos:  9980-9899

 

TELEGRAM:

LabourStart channel:  121-125

 

FACEBOOK PAGES/GROUPS:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

LabourStart.org page likes:  13717-13709

LabourStart.org page follows: 14678-14668

Global Labour News and Information: 8956-9027

LabourStart UK likes:  page unavailable

LabourStart UK follows:  2171

LabourStart Francophone: 590 (last post February 2021)

LabourStart-de: 496

LabourStart Brasil:  552-508

LabourStart Turkce:  2116-2126

LabourStart TV likes: 447-441

LabourStart TV follows:  454

LabourStart Vostok:  119

LabourStart Esperanto:  18

LabourStart Nepal:  6 (last post April 2017)

LabourStart Israel: CLOSED (last post 2018)

 

LINKEDIN:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Group: 2603-2588

Page: 226-216

 

TWITTER:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers for these  accounts.  Some accounts’ slow growth and losses, especially the USA account’s decline, can be attributed to users’ response to Musk’s takeover of the site.

Global English: 39076-38225

Canada English: 22962-22601

Portuguese: 11002-10687

Global Spanish: 10319-10064

Australia: 10581-9965

USA: 5300-5435

Canada French: 3061-3114

Russian: 47-46

Hebrew:  48 (last tweet 02-2021)

Italian: 507-508 (last tweet 11-2021)

Swedish: 335 (last tweet 2016)

Indonesia: 341-350 (last tweet 2015)

French: 224-227 (last tweet 2018)

German: 120 (last tweet 2018)

Japanese: 21 (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)

South Asia (English): 22 Placeholder and not yet active.

 

 

I’m a bit late with this update – sorry.

Our new Belarus campaign went live on 12 November, appears in 15 languages and currently has 6,906 supporters.

The Marlboro campaign (Turkey) finally went live to all our lists in early November. It too appears in 15 languages and has 5,646 supporters.

The Philippines campaign had just 2,875 supporters last month; it’s now up to 4,495.

We posted our first campaign ever in Greek.

Our mailing lists are growing. In November we added 753 new subscribers, with hundreds of new subscribers to both our English and Turkish lists.

Following the crisis in Twitter, we created a LabourStart account on Mastodon, the free, open source alternative. Our account is called @labourstart@union.place and as of this morning we have 70 followers.

We discovered a problem if one person did multiple translations of a campaign; this has now been fixed.

In late October in Kvareli, Georgia Eric spoke to an audience of 50 young Georgian activists about the trade union movement at an event funded by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

Eric also met with the Georgian Trade Union Confederation and three NGOs in Tbilisi to discuss our upcoming Global Solidarity Conference, which is currently scheduled for 28 April 2023.  He also visited two universities that might host the event.

The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the first day of last month.  Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since last month.

Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in italics.  Lists or accounts which experienced growth are in bold.

Mailing Lists:

The top 10:

English: 82457-74055

French: 7490-7483

German: 5796

Spanish: 5505-5498

Turkish: 4169

Korean: 3311

Italian: 3091-3088

Russian: 2686

Norwegian: 2142-2140

Romanian:  1771

Dutch: 1492-1476

The others:

Arabic:  821

Belarusian:  288

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 899

Creole:  11

Czech: 60

Danish: 92

Esperanto: 180

Farsi:  207

Finnish:  469-465

Georgian:  135

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  292-293

Hindi:  80

Hungarian:  179-178

Indonesian:  460

Japanese: 398-386

Lithuanian:  63

Malaysian: 21

Polish: 842

Portuguese: 1287

Punjabi:  2

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15

Swedish: 947

Tagalog: 159

Thai:  152

Ukrainian: 487

Vietnamese:  21

Internal:

Executive and Interns:  12

LabourStart Correspondents:  665-662

LabourStart Translators:  87

Africa Caucus:  63

 

Flickr:

Members:  837

Photos:  9899-9885

 

Telegram:

LabourStart channel:  125-120

 

Facebook Pages/Groups:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

LabourStart.org page likes:  13709-13577

LabourStart.org page follows: 14668-14499

Global Labour News and Information: 9027-9025

LabourStart UK likes:  page unavailable

LabourStart UK follows:  page unavailable

LabourStart Francophone: 590 (last post February 2021)

LabourStart Brasil:  508-503

LabourStart Turkce:  2126-2102

LabourStart TV likes: 441-444

LabourStart TV follows:  454-455

LabourStart Vostok:  119

LabourStart Esperanto:  18

LabourStart Nepal:  6 (last post April 2017)

LabourStart Israel: CLOSED (last post 2018)

 

LinkedIn:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Group: 2588-2576

Page: 216-209

 

Twitter:

Sporadic efforts were made to grow the Global English-language, Canadian English-language, Australian, Global Portuguese-language feeds.  No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers for other accounts.

Global English: 38225-37743

Canada English: 22601-22073

Portuguese: 10687-10217

Global Spanish: 10064-9918

Australia: 9965-9362

USA: 5435-5441

Canada French: 3114-3113

Russian: 46

Hebrew:  48 (last tweet 02-2021)

Italian: 508 (last tweet 11-2021)

Swedish: 335 (last tweet 2016)

Indonesia: 350 (last tweet 2015)

French: 227-226 (last tweet 2018)

German: 120 (last tweet 2018)

Japanese: 21 (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)

South Asia (English): 22-21 NEW and not yet active.

 

 

The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the first day of last month.  Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since last month.

Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in italics.  Lists or accounts which experienced growth are in bold.

 

Mailing Lists:

The top 10:

English: 73493

French: 7457

German: 5796-5766

Spanish: 5428

Turkish: 4161

Korean: 3308

Italian: 3074

Russian: 2668

Norwegian: 2121

Romanian:  1771

Dutch: 1476

The others:

Arabic:  821

Belarusian:  288

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 899

Creole:  11

Czech: 63

Danish: 92

Esperanto: 178

Farsi:  207

Finnish:  465

Georgian:  135

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  289

Hindi:  80

Hungarian:  178

Indonesian:  460

Japanese: 386

Lithuanian:  63

Malaysian: 21

Polish: 837

Portuguese: 1287

Punjabi:  2

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15

Swedish: 947

Tagalog: 159

Thai:  152

Ukrainian: 313

Vietnamese:  21

Internal:

Executive and Interns:  12

LabourStart Correspondents:  662-659

LabourStart Translators:  87

Africa Caucus:  63

 

Flickr:

Members:  837-838

Photos:  10303-10297

 

Facebook Pages/Groups:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

LabourStart.org page likes:  13553-13547

LabourStart.org page follows: 14499-14490

Global Labour News and Information: 9011-9013

LabourStart UK likes:  page unavailable-2032

LabourStart UK follows:  page unavailable-2096

LabourStart Francophone: 590 (last post February 2021)

LabourStart Brasil:  502

LabourStart Turkce:  2101-2104

LabourStart TV likes: 443-446

LabourStart TV follows:  455-460

LabourStart Israel: CLOSED (last post 2018)

 

LinkedIn:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Group: 2559-2545

Page: 188-123

 

Twitter:

Sporadic efforts were made to grow the Global English-language, Canadian English-language, Australian, Global Portuguese-language and Global Spanish- feeds.  No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers for other accounts.

Global English: 36978-36427

Canada English: 21291-20951

Portuguese: 9606-9193

Global Spanish: 9097-8940

Australia: 9031-8754

USA: 5453-5481

Canada French: 3109-3098

Russian: 46

Hebrew:  48 (last tweet 02-2021)

Italian: 508-507 (last tweet 11-2021)

Swedish: 335-337 (last tweet 2016)

Indoesia: 350 (last tweet 2015)

French: 226 (last tweet 2018)

German: 120 (last tweet 2018)

Japanese: 21 (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)

South Asia (English): 21 NEW and not yet active.

 

 

Algeria campaign: Following a conversation with IndustriALL – in which we learned that Ramzi remains in jail – we decided to ramp up publicity, both LabourStart and IndustriALL. We will make a special effort to reach out to unions in the Arab world.

Myanmar: We closed down the campaign with BWI’s permission. As they summed it up, “Early November, the CGU [Council of Global Unions] sent out letters to the UNGA [United Nations General Assembly] credentials committee chair and members with the signatories of the petition in attachment, asking to reject the junta’s credential. On 1 December, the credentials committee deferred the decision – rejecting the junta’s credential for the moment. Good first step.” This is good news and we believe that our campaign contributed to this.

Palestine: A couple of us participated in the webinar organised by Maan – and we expect a new campaign to be launched in the new year.

Puerto Rico: After three months we asked whether we could suspend the campaign and have been told we should keep it live for now.

Mailing lists: In the absence of new campaigns, the list is only growing slowly – we picked up just 37 new subscribers this week. This will grow in the new year.

Twitter: We have just under 30,000 followers to LabourStart’s main global account (in English) – and by the time you read this, we will probably have reached our target. Well done to all those who have invested many hours in growing our presence on this important social media platform – especially Derek.

Twitter: We created a List of global unions and publicised it widely across social media (but not yet in a mass mailing). The list already has 25 followers and we’ve been re-tweeting many of the posts there to boost interest in what the global unions are saying and doing.

Africa: We wrote to all 68 correspondents we identified in 19 countries noting that we’ll hold our first online event with them in January.

Romania: With the agreement of the ETF, we closed down the long-running campaign in support of Bucharest metro workers.  The campaign had nearly 7,800 supporters, making it one of the largest recent campaigns.

Interns: We will be reaching out to labour studies departments looking for recent graduates as potential paid interns (living wage). We have also been approached by GLU to again take interns this coming year.

LabourStartJobs.org: We gave further publicity to this sub-site of LabourStart, which continues to feature jobs in unions in the UK and Canada, with a smattering form elsewhere.  27 jobs were posted here in the first 9 days of December.

Mailing lists: Our lists grew by another 143 subscribers this week – 96 of those for the English list.

Podcast: The Union Dues podcast (UK) featuring Eric Lee talking about LabourStart is the third most popular they have ever done, with about 215 listeners. We did a further round of publicity later in the week to boost this a bit.

 

The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the first day of last month.  Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since last month.

Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in Italics.  Lists or accounts experiencing significant growth are in bold.

We continue to see the effects of the EU’s GDPR.  Our lists are growing again but not at the rate that was common for most of our lists prior to its implementation.

Mailing Lists:

The top 10:

English: 74628-74596

French: 7715-7635

German: 5825-5783

Spanish: 5155-5119

Turkish: 4279-4277

Korean: 3317

Italian: 3270-3265

Russian: 2715-2708

Norwegian: 2257-2260

Dutch: 1460-1445

 

The others:

Arabic:  817-819

Belarusian:  288-287

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 964

Creole:  11

Czech: 65-64

Danish: 99-101

Esperanto: 165-162

Farsi:  212

Finnish:  517-516

Georgian:  142-138

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  307-241

Hindi:  35

Hungarian:  191-192

Indonesian:  433-432

Japanese: 402

Polish: 860-857

Portuguese: 1313-1310

Punjabi:  2

Romanian:  39

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15

Swedish: 1012

Tagalog: 159

Thai:  152

Ukrainian: 306-317

Vietnamese:  21-24

LabourStart Correspondents:  643

LabourStart Translators:  86-83

 

Flickr:

834-835 members. 

10129-10095 photos.

 

Facebook Pages/Groups:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

LabourStart.org page likes:  13514-13501

LabourStart.org page follows: 14391-14368

Global Labour News and Information: 8861-8864

LabourStart UK:  2131-2134

LabourStart Francophone: 591

LabourStart Brasil:  551

LabourStart Turkce:  2149-2198

LabourStart TV: 452-447 follows.

 

LinkedIn:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Group: 2286-2282 members.

Page: 56-49 follows.

 

Twitter:

The Global Spanish- and Portuguese-language accounts received some attention this month. No other concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Global English: 26878-26608

Canada English: 15104-14908

USA: 5622-5631

Australia: 4951

Global Spanish: 5402-4940

Portuguese: 4631-4358

Canada French: 2759-2765

Italian: 505-504 (last tweet June 2019)

Swedish: 349-348 (last tweet 2016)

Indonesia: 350 (last tweet 2015)

French: 229-228 (last tweet 2018)

German: 122-126 (last tweet 2018)

Russian: 43 (last tweet November 2019)

Japanese: 20 (last tweet 2012)

Hebrew:  17 (new this month)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)

The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the first day of last month.  Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since last month.

Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in Italics.  Lists or accounts experiencing significant growth are in bold.

We continue to see the effects of the EU’s GDPR.

Mailing Lists:

The top 10:

English: 74596-74133

French: 7635-7613

German: 5783-5781

Spanish: 5119-5106

Turkish: 4277-4271

Korean: 3317

Italian: 3265-3289

Russian: 2708-2677

Norwegian: 2260-2258

Dutch: 1445-1434

The others:

Arabic:  819-736

Belarusian:  287

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 964-967

Creole:  11

Czech: 64

Danish: 101

Esperanto: 162-161

Farsi:  212

Finnish:  516

Georgian:  138

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  241-240

Hindi:  35

Hungarian:  192-191

Indonesian:  432

Japanese: 402-404

Polish: 857-862

Portuguese: 1310-1303

Punjabi:  2

Romanian:  39

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15

Swedish: 1012-1013

Tagalog: 159

Thai:  152

Ukrainian: 317-304

Vietnamese:  21-24

LabourStart Correspondents:  643-637

LabourStart Translators:  83-74

 

Flickr:

 

835-833 members.

10095-10089 photos.

 

Facebook Pages/Groups:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

LabourStart.org page likes:  13501-13458

LabourStart.org page follows: 14368-14305

Global Labour News and Information: 8864-8865

LabourStart UK:  2134-2133

LabourStart Francophone: 591

LabourStart Brasil:  551-509

LabourStart Turkce:  2198-2176

LabourStart TV: 447-459 follows.

 

LinkedIn:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Group: 2282-2253 members.

Page: 49-35 follows.

 

Twitter:

The Global Portuguese-language account received some attention this month No other concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Global English: 26608-26663

Canada English: 14908-14863

USA: 5631-5630

Australia: 4951-4957

Global Spanish: 4940

Portuguese: 4358-4153

Canada French: 2765-2783

Italian: 504 (last tweet June 2019)

Swedish: 348-349 (last tweet 2016)

Indonesia: 350 (last tweet 2015)

French: 228 – 229 (last tweet 2018)

German: 122-126 (last tweet 2018)

Russian: 43 (last tweet November 2019)

Japanese: 20 (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)

The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the first day of last month.  Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since last month.

Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in Italics.  Lists or accounts experiencing significant growth are in bold.

We continue to see the effects of the EU’s GDPR.

Mailing Lists:

The top 10:

English: 74133 – 74224

French: 7613 – 7622

German: 5781 – 5797

Spanish: 5106 – 5098

Turkish: 4271 – 4274

Korean: 3317

Italian: 3289

Russian: 2677 – 2678

Norwegian: 2258 – 2261

Dutch: 1434 – 1437

 

The others:

Arabic:  736

Belarusian:  287

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 967 – 972

Creole:  11

Czech: 64

Danish: 101

Esperanto: 161

Farsi:  212

Finnish:  516

Georgian:  138

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  240

Hindi:  35

Hungarian:  191 – 193

Indonesian:  432

Japanese: 404

Polish: 862

Portuguese: 1303 – 1304

Punjabi:  2

Romanian:  39

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15

Swedish: 1013 – 1018

Tagalog: 159

Thai:  152

Ukrainian: 304 – 306

Vietnamese:  24

LabourStart Correspondents:  637 – 641

LabourStart Translators:  74 – 72

 

Flickr:

833 members.

10289 – 10279 photos.

 

Facebook Pages and Groups:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

LabourStart.org page likes:  13458 – 13445

LabourStart.org page follows: 14305 – 14273

Global Labour News and Information: 8865 – 8869

LabourStart UK:  2133 – 2068

LabourStart Franco: 591 – 589

LabourStart Brasil:  550 – 509

LabourStart Turkce:  2176 – 2209

LabourStart TV: 459 – 445 follows.

 

LinkedIn:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Group: 2253 – 2225 members.

Page: 35 follows.

 

Twitter:

The Global English-, Spanish- and Portuguese-language accounts received some attention this month No other concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Global English: 26663 – 26309

Canada English: 14863 – 14669

USA: 5630 – 5623

Australia: 4957 – 4962

Global Spanish: 4940 – 4648

Portuguese: 4153 – 4066

Canada French: 2783 – 2271

Italian: 504 – 503 (last tweet June 2019)

Swedish: 349 – 351 (last tweet 2016)

Indonesia: 350 (last tweet 2015)

French: 228 – 229 (last tweet 2018)

German: 126 (last tweet 2018)

Russian: 43 – 42 (last tweet November 2019)

Japanese: 20 (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)