Orhan Akman.
After three months online, we today closed the campaign in support of Orhan Akman, a UNI Global Union organizer who was expelled from Peru.
The campaign had 7,640 supporters and was our largest campaign at the moment we closed it.
We’re waiting to hear from our partners what effect the campaign has had.
At the request of the Education International we’ve launched a new campaign this week in support of Ecuador’s embattled teachers’ union.
The campaign is here: http://www.labourstart.org/go/une
Uktam Pardaev, fighter for human rights in Uzbekistan.
Nearly four months after it was launched, yesterday we closed down our campaign in support of Uzbek human rights defender Uktam Pardaev. The campaign, which ran in 15 languages, had the support of 10,474 trade unionists. It was our largest current campaign and one of the rare ones to break the 10,000 mark. We are currently waiting to hear what effect, if any, it had on the ground.
Meanwhile, our most popular current campaign is in support of UNI activist Orhan Akman who was deported from Peru. That campaign is due to close in just a couple of days and has 7,632 supporters. In a couple of weeks we’ll also be closing our campaign in support of forestry workers in Turkey, which currently has 6,676 supporters.
All the remaining campaigns have fewer supporters than these three.
So, how do we get campaigns to regularly have 10,000 or more supporters? Part of it has to do with the campaigns themselves. Usually campaigns that focus on extreme violations of workers’ rights (such as the case of Pardaev in Uzbekistan) tend to attract more supporters than campaigns which focus on bread-and-butter issues such as disputes over collective bargaining and union recognition. Nevertheless those campaigns, while not as popular, sometimes have a great effect on the ground.
LabourStart editor Eric Lee meeting Bernie Sanders and Larry Sanders in Philadelphia.
I spent the last couple of weeks in the United States, mostly attending the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Nevertheless, I managed to do a few LabourStart tasks:
TURKEY:
Following the abortive military coup and the increase of repression, I contacted our comrades in Turkey as well as a couple of global union federations about a campaign. So far, there has not been any interest.
DISK did issue a statement, which we publicized widely. We’ve also given extensive publicity to statements issued by global unions about the situation in Turkey.
A request came in for another Turkey campaign, unrelated to the coup. However, it appears to be an internal union dispute, so we will not pursue this.
I followed up with the International Federation of Journalists, which has launched an online effort in support of Turkish journalists, and they are considering working with us on a campaign.
AFP campaign:
I sent out the campaign mailing in additional languages. I also added a link to the LabourRadio interview. I did a followup email to English list; the campaign had 4,289 supporters; the follow-up mailing went out to 74,008 people. As a result, the campaign now has 5,341, a gain of over 1,000 people. It remains, however, a small campaign.
SFI campaign:
At the request of BWI, we’ve launched another campaign in support of forestry workers in Malaysia. It has 3,367 supporters as of today and appears in 9 languages with more coming. Our mailing also promoted the IUF’s current campaign on India, which has received a boost due to our effort. I publicized this campaign on Facebook and Twitter and sent out mailings promoting it in a number of languages.
Uzbekistan campaign:
As three months have now passed, I’d asked for permission to close this down. It’s our largest current campaign with well over 10,000 supporters.
USA:
I offered LabourStart’s help with a Philadelphia airport workers campaign. The strike however was settled on the eve of the Democratic Convention.
I’ve informed the Workers Independent News Service that I’ll not be submitting additional “Working World” broadcasts as I did for several months this year.
The following is the text of an email message we received this week from Turkey.
Through your e-mail, we have been informed that campaign of the CP Chicken Workers has been completed and closed.
First of all, I would like to thank you and LabourStart family standing in solidarity with us. Although it had started much late than we suppose, we had a great opportunity to strengthen our struggle through this campaign. As you know, we are maintaining the struggle in the Labour Court and keeps on organizing workers at the company. In this sense, the campaign has also encouraged the fired workers who are still waiting for the result of Labour Court. Furthermore, with this campaign, we had an opportunity to discuss the struggle of CP workers with IUF. Now, we are working on a new international campaign at CP Chicken Company as well as reassembling our organizing campaigning. I would like to say that all these new steps have been sparked by the LabourStart campaign.
Your support and your solidarity always encourage us and strengthen our working class struggle in Turkey.
In Solidarity.
Comradely greetings.
Seyit Aslan
President
DISK-GIDA-IS
(Union of Food Industry Workers of Turkey)
Some highlights:
* Significant growth to the English and Turkish mailing lists.
* Slow growth on social networks except for the LabourStart Brasil Facebook presence, which grew by nearly 50% this quarter.
* 24 new correspondents – on average, 2 new ones per week.
* Significant growth in traffic to our news website with 10,000 more unique users than in the previous quarter.
* Our campaigns site also experienced significant growth, with nearly 38,000 unique visitors in this period.
* Downloads of our Android app have slowed dramatically, and fewer people are using it than in the past.
Mailing lists
English: 88,242 – 85,445
French: 8,791 – 8,438
German: 6,021 – 5,870
Spanish: 5,531 – 5,455
Turkish: 4,268 – 3,722
Italian: 4,044 – 4,029
Korean: 3,965 – 3,965
Norwegian: 2,701 – 2,736
Russian: 2,449 – 2,438
Dutch: 1,774 – 1,774
Swedish: 1,235 – 1,255
Chinese: 1,112 – 1,112
Polish: 798 – 798
Finnish: 687 – 687
Japanese: 518 – 518
Arabic: 478 – 450
Portuguese: 475 – 468
Indonesian: 346 – 346
Hebrew: 296 – 286
Tagalog: 254 – 254
Farsi: 242 – 242
Social networks
Twitter followers
English: 16,188 – 15,817
Canada English: 5,661 – 5,207
Canada French: 1,071 – 956
USA: 608 – 582
Italian: 458 – 448
Indonesia: 368 – 368
Swedish: 356 – 345
French: 225 – 226
Portuguese: 92 – 71
German: 91 – 90
Spanish: 73 – 74
Japanese: 22 – 22
Russian: 18 – 18
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 10,528 – 10,319
Members of LabourStart group: 8,521 – 8,572
Friends of LabourStart Brasil: 1,681 – 1,198
Like LabourStart page (French): 535 – 500
Like LabourStart page (German): 472 – 462
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 175 – 168
Like LabourStart page (Hebrew): 155 – 151
Members of LabourStart Vostok [Russian]: 109 – 89
UnionBook
Members: 5,929 – 5,915
LabourStart group: 2,012 – 1,996
Flickr
Union group on Flickr: 806 – 802
Website
Correspondents: 826 – 802
LabourStart.org (news)
Unique users – 41,506 – 31,026
Top countries (by sessions):
USA 23% – 25%
Canada 15% – 16%
UK 12% – 11%
Australia 5% – 5%
France – 4%
Most popular pages – page views:
Home page – English 34,337 – 37,618
USA – English 8,294 – 2,788
Canada – English 6,297 – 2,129
India – 3,853 – 1,098
Home page – Norwegian 2,746 – 2,309
LabourStartCampaigns.net (campaigns)
Unique users – 37,851 – 21,763
Top countries (by sessions):
UK 16% – 15%
USA 14% – 14%
Germany 7% – 10%
Canada 10% – 9%
France 5%
Most popular pages – page views:
Uzbekistan: Defend human rights activist Uktam Pardaev – 12,011
Colombia: Free academic and unionist Miguel Ángel Beltrán – 10,780
Peru: Union organizer expelled – 8,497
Gambia: Justice for Sheriff Diba – 8,233
Turkey: Support the union members fighting to save the forests of Cerattepe – 4,939
Android app downloads (totals)
First number is current, second number is total installs. The numbers in brackets are from the previous quarter.
English: 370 / 795 [387 / 757]
Norwegian: 41 / 49 [38 / 48]
Esperanto: 25 / 105 [33 / 99]
Total: 436 [458] current installs
Books
Work is being done on our book on migrant labour which we hope to launch in Toronto. We have a cover and the inside pages are nearly done.
Campaigns
I’ve asked the KCTU and HKCTU for permission to close down the Korea and China campaigns, both of which have been running for a long time.
A new campaign in support of Turkish union GIDA-IS is about to go live.
The campaign submission page has a new field for videos so these can be incorporated into future campaigns.
I did the monthly review of translations into our major languages and identified some problems, especially with German campaigns.
Correspondents
Weekly mailings to all correspondents continue. One focussed on the use of states and regions in news stories; the other encouraged the 90% who’ve been inactive to get active.
Donations
We received a large donation from a branch of Unite the Union in the UK. The Education International and UNI have also made substantial donations to us.
News
Mahesh pointed out a problem with tweeting a news story with a apostrophe in the title.
Radio
I have submitted weekly programmes to WINS on the terrorist attacks in Brussels and the new crackdown on independent unions in Egypt.
Upcoming
On Thursday, I’ll be speaking on a panel with a leader of Unite the Union and Amnesty International’s Shane Enright on corporate campaigning, in London.
Campaigns:
At the request of the Education International, we launched a campaign in defense of a jailed teacher trade unionist.
The ITF requested and we launched a campaign protesting the killing in custody of a Gambian trade union leader.
A Turkish union, GIDA-IS, has asked us to do a campaign which we will launch shortly.
Conference:
We now have a draft agenda ready, a logo, a WordPress blog is being created, and we have hired an intern to work with us on this (Angela).
Correspondents:
I resumed weekly mailings to all our 600+ correspondents. Each week, they get news and ideas how they can be more active or use LabourStart better. Focusses of recent mailings have included encouraging them to get their unions to issue statements in support of our campaigns, International Women’s Day, and how to link campaigns to news.
I added at least 16 new correspondents in the last two weeks — there had been a backlog dating back to January.
Mailing lists:
We’ve added hundreds of new people to our lists due to the recent campaigns.
Newswires:
I fixed the script that builds the JavaScript newswire, adidng a requirement that stories be in English, because there are now Russian and French priority 1 news stories.
It also turned out that there was an old, broken link to our campaigns newswire on the site, but this has now been fixed.
Outreach:
I’ve been invited to speak on a panel on 31 March in London, together with Shane Enright from Amnesty International, on campaigning. The panel is hosted by the Ethical Trading Initiative.
I will also be representing LabourStart at an event to be held in mid-April at the House of Lords in London; details to follow.
Ratify the Protocol:
We continue offering support to this important initiative from the ITUC (against modern slavery) and this month did a mailing to our Italian list after our volunteer translators translated the ITUC’s campaign page.
WINS Working World – Labor Radio:
I continue with recording weekly programs — the most recent one was on the Palestinian teachers’ strike. These can be found here: http://www.laborradio.org/?zone=/unionactive/view_page.cfm&page=The20Working20World
Some highlights:
The second number is the previous quarter (if we have it); some lines are particularly interesting and have been highlighted in green.
Mailing lists
English: 85,445 – 85,588
French: 8,438 – 8,325
German: 5,870 – 5,785
Spanish: 5,455 – 5,448
Italian: 4,029 – 3,970
Korean: 3,965 – 3,068
Turkish: 3,722 – 3,719
Norwegian: 2,736 – 2,782
Russian: 2,438 – 2,433
Dutch: 1,774 – 1,774
Swedish: 1,255 – 1,256
Chinese: 1,112 – 1,103
Polish: 798 – 793
Finnish: 687 – 687
Japanese: 518 – 488
Portuguese: 468 – 416
Arabic: 450 – 463
Indonesian: 346 – 346
Hebrew: 286 – 282
Tagalog: 254 – 254
Farsi: 242 – 242
Social networks
Twitter followers
English: 15,817 – 15,395
Canada English: 5,207 – 4,962
Canada French: 956 – 876
USA: 582 – 563
Italian: 448 – 421
Indonesia: 368 – 360
Swedish: 345 – 306
French: 226 – 229
German: 90 – 90
Spanish: 74 – 76
Portuguese: 71 – 47
Japanese: 22 – 21
Russian: 18 – 18
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 10,319 – 10,177
Members of LabourStart group: 8,572 – 8,611
Friends of LabourStart Brasil: 1,198
Like LabourStart page (French): 500 – 483
Like LabourStart page (German): 462 – 447
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 168 – 169
Like LabourStart page (Hebrew): 151 – 148
Members of LabourStart Vostok [Russian]: 89 – 82
UnionBook
Members: 5,915 – 5,909
LabourStart group: 1,996 – 1,970
Flickr
Union group on Flickr: 802 – 791
Website
Correspondents: 802 – 798
LabourStart.org (news)
Unique users – 31,026 – 22,366
Top countries (by sessions):
USA 25% – 29%
Canada 16% – 15%
UK 11% – 9%
Australia 5% – 5%
France 4%
Most popular pages – page views:
Home page – English 37,618 – 41,764
USA – English 13,089 – 13,941
Canada – English 7,616 – 6,294
India – 2,444
Home page – Norwegian – 2,309 – 2,807
LabourStartCampaigns.net (campaigns)
Unique users – 39,304 – 35,723
Top countries (by sessions):
UK 15% – 17%
USA 13% – 14%
Canada 12% – 16%
Germany 6% – 5%
Belgium 5%
Most popular pages – page views:
Egypt: Torture and murder of Giulio Regeni – 13,011
China: Free jailed labour activists, stop suppressing labour organizations! – 6,692
Israel/China: Stop governments’ deal to import bonded workers – 6,324
Djibouti: Teacher trade unionist sentenced to prison – 6,213
Iran: Detained teacher unionist on hunger strike – 5,166
Android app downloads (totals)
First number is current, second number is total installs. The numbers in brackets are from the previous quarter.
English: 387 / 757 [408 / 721]
Norwegian: 38 / 48 [37 / 43]
Esperanto: 33 / 99 [30 / 88]
Total: 458 current installs [475]
I had wanted these to be fortnightly reports — but it’s hard to keep that going with so much happening. So, apologies for the delay. Here’s what’s happened in the last five weeks:
CAMPAIGNS
RADIO
We’re now submitting weekly 2 1/2 minute reports to the Workers Independent News Service (WINS) in the US. This is in addition to our ongoing cooperation with Radio Labour, based in Canada.
FINANCES
We received a generous donation from Building and Woodworkers International.
EVENTS
I spoke at a meeting of communications staffers of European unions in Gdansk, Poland last week.
CORRESPONDENTS
We’ve resumed regular mailings to correspondents, which will take place every week — after a gap of nearly 10 months.
BOOKS
The complete manuscript for the next LabourStart book, The Strangers Among Us, has been received and we’re currently formatting it. We hope to have a book launch event at our conference in Toronto.
CONFERENCE
Speaking of which — we have a large number of workshop proposals and 371 people signed up to attend; there’s an organizing committee and an intern hired, and we’ll soon have an agenda.
PUBLICITY
At the suggestion of the British TUC, we submitted a nomination form for the SMK Campaigners Awards; they will decide by the end of February and their ceremony in the House of Lords will take place on 13 April.
TRANSLATIONS
We need a new Spanish translator as our comrade David has fallen ill; we got several dozen volunteers for the job.
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