Inside LabourStart

Ramzi Dardar – still in jail.

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)

Mailing Lists:

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 no number is provided for last month this means that the list was re-created this month from our Mail Chimp back-up.

We continue see the impact of the General Data Protection Regulation.  Shrinking lists are in Italics.  Lists experiencing significant growth are in bold.

The Top 10:

English: 74,228-73,527

French: 7,679-7,720

Spanish: 5,137-5,141

Turkish: 4,282-4,222

Korean: 3,397-3,399

Italian: 3,322-3,326

Russian: 2,641-2,630

Norwegian: 2,243-2,558

Dutch: 1,455-1,472

The Others:

Arabic:  738

Belarusian:  18

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 980-984

Creole:  11

Czech: 66-66

Danish: 103-104

Esperanto: 158-160

Farsi:  212

Finnish:  519

Georgian:  138

German: 5,793-5,844

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  242-243

Hindi:  36

Hungarian:  193-192

Indonesian:  435

Japanese: 404-no change

Polish: 859-863

Portuguese: 1,290-1,258

Romanian:  39

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15-15

Swedish: 1,031-1,036

Tagalog: 160-161

Thai:  153

Ukrainian: 281-277

Vietnamese:  24

Flickr:

833-834 members.  10,220-10,218 photos.

Facebook Pages/Groups:

LabourStart.org page: 13,410-14,148

Global Labour News and Information: 8,867-no data.

LabourStart UK:  2139-2145

LabourStart Franco: 591-592.

LabourStart Brasil:  506-no data.

LabourStart Turkce:  2191-no data.

LabourStart TV: 431-no change.

LinkedIn:

Group: 2174-2150

Twitter:

All the major feeds experienced growth starting when the COVID-19 crisis hit.  Accounts experiencing significant increases are in bold.

English: 25,449-25,265

Canada English: 14,132-13,729

USA: 5,663-5,669

Australia: 4,956-4,872

Spanish: 4,557-4,432

Canada French: 2,646-2,612

Portuguese: 3,418-3,176

Italian: 504-517 (last tweet June 2019)

Swedish: 352-361 (last tweet 2016)

Indonesia: 350 (last tweet 2015)

French: 227-no change (last tweet 2018)

German: 126-no change (last tweet 2018)

Russian: 42-40 (last tweet November 2019)

Japanese: 20-no change (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12-no change (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7-no change (last tweet May 2012)

1 July vs 1 June 2020 Numbers

Flickr:

834 members, No change.  10,210 photos.

Facebook Pages/Groups:

LabourStart.org page: 13,440-14,133 likes.

LabourStart UK:  2087-no data.

LabourStart Franco: 592-no data.

LabourStart TV:  431-no data.

LinkedIn:

2137-2087.

Twitter:

During this period we have made occasional efforts to build the Spanish-language, Portuguese-language and Australian accounts. All the major feeds experienced growth starting when the COVID-19 crisis hit.  Accounts experiencing significant increases are in bold.

English: 24,939-24,364

Canada English: 13,063-12,394

USA: 5,662-5,609

Australia: 4,991-4,344

Spanish: 4,040-3,674

Canada French: 2,545-2,429

Portuguese: 2,913-2,132

Italian: 517 (last tweet June 2019)

Swedish: 361 (last tweet 2016)

Indonesia: 350 (last tweet 2015)

French: 227 (last tweet 2018)

German: 126 (last tweet 2018)

Russian: 42-40 (last tweet November 2019)

Japanese: 20 (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)

1 June vs 1 May 2020 Numbers

Flickr:

834 members, 10,210 photos. No Data for May.

Facebook Page:

14,133-no data from May.

LinkedIn:

2,077.  No data for May.

Twitter:

During this period we have not made any concerted efforts to build the accounts. All the major feeds experienced growth starting when the COVID-19 crisis hit.  Accounts experiencing significant increases are in bold.


English: 24,364-23,798
Canada English: 12,394-11,706
USA: 5,609-5,526
Australia: 4,344-4,227
Spanish: 3,674-3,493
Canada French: 2,429-2,277
Portuguese: 2,132-1,816
Italian: 517 (last tweet June 2019)
Swedish: 361 (last tweet 2016)
Indonesia: 350 (last tweet 2015)
French: 227 (last tweet 2018)
German: 126 (last tweet 2018)
Russian: 40
Japanese: 20 (last tweet 2012)
Dutch: 12
Arabic: 7

In this report, which covers the last six months or so, I’ve added a new feature at the very top — the numbers regarding our campaigns. These numbers, important though they are, do not reflect the success of those campaigns. Some of the smaller ones actually achieved good results, while larger ones had little impact in some cases. In any event, please note that we’ve not run a campaign for some time that got more than 10,000 supporters — and we should aim to achieve that again, and soon.

Our mailing lists continue to shrink thanks to GDPR, and of the large lists, only the Turkish one has experienced any growth.

On social media, we’ve seen very small growth in our presence on Facebook, but some very good growth in some of our Twitter feeds. This is particularly evident for our global Spanish and Portuguese feeds, and our Australia and Canada feeds.

The first number below is today’s count, the second is from six months ago.

ActNOW campaigns

Currently active global campaigns

Pakistan: Reinstate the Karachi Eight – 7,489
Philippines: Holcim workers demand justice – 6,507
Turkey: Reinstate municipal workers in Alia?a – 6,390
Poland: Hutchison Ports must reinstate union activist Marek Szymczak – 6,288
Cambodia: Solidarity with workers at the West Mebun temple – 5,573

Other campaigns closed in 2019

Canadian Postal Workers Forced Back to Work, Supporters Jailed – 8,875
Turkey: Release jailed construction workers – Ensure occupational safety at Istanbul Airport – 8,800
China: Release Jailed Labour Rights Activists Exercising Rights to Freedom of Association – 8,559
Kazakhstan: Stop repression and physical attacks on leaders of independent unions; hands off Larisa Kharkova, Erlan Baltabai and Dmitriy Senyavskiy – 8,508
Philippines: Teacher unionists under threat – 8,130
Guatemala: Union leaders imprisoned for having negotiated a collective agreement – 8,128
Thailand: Olympic 2020 partner Mitsubishi Electric humiliates workers – 7,798
Iran: Stop jailing teachers now – 7,671
Thailand: Union leaders sacked, fined for demanding rail safety – 7,494
Hungary: Stop the slave law – 7,288
Kazakhstan: Erlan Baltabay sentenced to 7 years in prison for union activity – 7,070
Jordan: New labour law must recognise workers’ rights – 5,472
Korea: Stop the Outsourcing of Danger – Justice for Kim Yong-gyun! – 3,983
Jordan: King must reject flawed labour law passed by Parliament – 3,539

Mailing lists

The top 10:

English: 76,387 – 79,891
French: 8,277 – 8,531
German: 5,940 – 6,065
Spanish: 5,164 – 5,228
Turkish: 4,266 – 4,243
Korean: 3,742 – 3,791
Italian: 3,563 – 3,663
Russian: 2,694 – 2,725
Norwegian: 2,481 – 2,553
Dutch: 1,597 – 1,638

The others:

Swedish: 1,080 – 1,098
Chinese: 1,026 – 1,037
Arabic: 954 – 957
Portuguese: 866 – 849
Polish: 680 – 713
Finnish: 532 – 538
Japanese: 421 – 446
Indonesian: 394 – 395
Ukrainian: 296 – 247
Hebrew: 251 – 257
Farsi: 218 – 218
Georgian: 217 – 217
Hungarian: 185 – 178
Tagalog: 175 – 203
Esperanto: 175 – 179
Thai: 154 – 64
Danish: 81 – 83
Czech: 71 – 71
Greek: 57 – 57
Romanian: 39 – 41
Hindi: 37 – 37
Vietnamese: 25 – 25
Bulgarian: 18 – 18
Slovakian: 15 – 15
Creole: 12- 12
Sinhalese: 1- 1

Social media

Facebook

Like LabourStart.org page (English): 12,986 – 12,835
Members of LabourStart group (Global Labour News and Information): 8,631 – 8,629
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 2,256 – 2,314
Like LabourStart UK page: 2,097 – 2,075
Like LabourStart page (French): 585 – 581
Like LabourStart page (German): 502 – 495
Friends of LabourStart Brasil: 481 – 468
LabourStart TV: 420 – 404
Like LabourStart page (Hebrew): 156 – 157
Members of LabourStart Vostok (Russian): 114 – 111

Twitter

English: 22,578 – 21,374
Canada English: 10,547- 9,578
USA: 4,822 – 3,584
Australia: 3,986 – 3,075
Spanish: 2,177 – 1,200
Canada French: 2,155 – 1,956
Portuguese: 1,397 – 321
Italian: 517 – 516 (last tweet June 2019)
Indonesia: 354 – 354 (last tweet 2015)
Swedish: 361 – 364 (last tweet 2016)
French: 230 – 235 (last tweet 2018)
German: 122 – 123 (last tweet 2018)
Russian: – 34
Japanese: 19 – 19 (last tweet 2012)
Dutch: – 12
Arabic: – 7

Linked In

LabourStart group: 2,130 – 2,119

Flickr

Union group on Flickr: 835 – 834

LabourStart’s news website

Correspondents: 930 – 905

Website traffic to the main news website

Visitors 371,877 – 391,616

Highlights:

• Thanks to GDPR, almost all the mailing lists are shrinking in size. The only ones to grow in the last quarter are Korean, Russian, Hungarian, and Esperanto.
• On social media, the big news is the spectacular growth of our revived Twitter feed in Spanish – thanks to Derek’s hard work. LabourStart’s Spanish speaking correspondents, translators and supporters are invited to help keep this growth going.
• Traffic to the main news site was relatively stable, with just under 400,000 visitors this quarter.

In the list below, the first number is the current total, the second one is our previous total.

Mailing lists

The top 10:

English: 79,891 – 80,850
French: 8,531 – 8,610
German: 6,065 – 6,103
Spanish: 5,228 – 5,356
Turkish: 4,243 – 4,260
Korean: 3,791 – 3,740
Italian: 3,663 – 3,719
Russian: 2,725 – 2,450
Norwegian: 2,553 – 2,603
Dutch: 1,638 – 1,669

The others:

Swedish: 1,098 – 1,179
Chinese: 1,037 – 1,043
Arabic: 957 – 957
Portuguese: 849 – 859
Polish: 713 – 798
Finnish: 538 – 562
Japanese: 446 – 446
Indonesian: 395 – 395
Hebrew: 257 – 262
Ukrainian: 247 – 254
Farsi: 218 – 232
Georgian: 217 – 217
Tagalog: 203 – 203
Esperanto: 179 – 177
Hungarian: 178 – 159
Danish: 83 – 86
Czech: 71 – 72
Thai: 64 – 64
Greek: 57 – 57
Romanian: 41 – 41
Hindi: 37 – 37
Vietnamese: 25 – 25
Bulgarian: 18 – 18
Slovakian: 15 – 15
Creole: 12 – 12
Sinhalese: 1 – 1

Facebook

Like LabourStart.org page (English): 12,835 – 12,698
Members of LabourStart group (Global Labour News and Information): 8,629 – 8,899
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 2,314 – 2,365
Like LabourStart UK page: 2,075 – 2,088
Like LabourStart page (French): 581 – 575
Like LabourStart page (German): 495 – 493
Friends of LabourStart Brasil: 468 – 450
LabourStart TV: 404 – 405
Like LabourStart page (Hebrew): 157 – 157
Members of LabourStart Vostok (Russian): 111 – 126

Twitter

English: 21,374 – 20,878
Canada English: 9,578 – 9,549
USA: 3,584 – 3,586
Australia: 3,075 – 2,863
Canada French: 1,956 – 1,939
Spanish: 1,200 – 70
Italian: 516 – 525
Swedish: 364 – 366
Indonesia: 354 – 353
Portuguese: 321 – 307
French: 235 – 236
German: 123 – 94
Russian: 34 – 31
Japanese: 19 – 19
Dutch: 12 – 12
Arabic: 7 – 7

Linked In

LabourStart group: 2,119 – 2,088

Flickr

Union group on Flickr: 834 – 831

Website traffic to the main news website

Visitors 391,616 – 399,164

Top countries (by sessions):

USA 39% – 38%
UK 13% – 12%
France 5%
India 5% – 6%
Canada 4% – 4%

Correspondents: 905 – 900