Inside LabourStart

Real world trade union solidarity - the picket at GEA.

Ten days ago, a couple of bus-loads of trade union activists from around 30 countries paid a solidarity visit to the picket line of locked-out workers at GEA, a German-owned metal company in Turkey.

We’ve now been asked by the International Metalworkers Federation to turn this into an online campaign, and have done so this morning.

The campaign is here.

We thought the solidarity picket was very exciting and tried to share some of that excitement with comrades who couldn’t be with us in Turkey.

It will be interesting to see if we can keep up the momentum, turning a real-world act of solidarity into an online one.

Please spread the word.

We’ve also today launched a campaign in support of jailed Pakistani trade union leaders – at the request of the ITGLWF.

As we’ve launched three campaigns in less than a week, we’re going to stagger the publicity to our mailing lists — and will start with the IMF Turkey campaign.

Check it out here.

You might find this piece of some interest.

Less than 24 hours after launch, both jailed trade unionists are now free.  I’m announcing this to our correspondents first, then to our lists.

At the request of the ITUC we’re closing the current Fiji campaign and launching a new one today.

The previous campaign, launched in late August, was our second largest in 2011 and one of the very largest we’ve ever done, with well over 7,000 messages sent and over 2,000 recommendations on Facebook.

Let’s hope the current campaign, which is being rolled out over a few days, can beat that and lead to the release of the union leaders.

This is now live.  I had to do a lot of work with the text, which was long and convoluted and still is.  Sorry about that.  I tried to get the union to do this through the GUF, in the hope that this would result in better text, but failed in my effort.  This is something we should discuss in Istanbul – how to ensure a kind of quality control for the texts in our campaigns, which are often criticised by both our users and our translators.  In any event, please support and publicise this important campaign.

After three months I suspended the PSI-backed campaign in support of Korean public sector workers.  The campaign got a modest 3,934 supporters and 799 likes on Facebook.  This is similar to the response we had on the other Korea campaign.  Without the broad support of the Korean labour movement for these campaigns, it’s unlikely that any of them will go massive.  I’ve asked PSI if they can tell us what effect, if any, the campaign had on the ground.

We currently have three campaign requests from a Turkish union (backed by the ITLGWF), from the Education International (regarding Bahrain), and from the Solidarity Center regarding Mexico.  I do not want to launch three campaigns in a day, or even a week, so this will be a bit of a juggling act.

This took less than 100 hours. Our campaign is now closed.

hiv Kumar, General Secretary of the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU) thanked the IMF, IMF-JC, JAW and LabourStart for their solidarity extended to the striking workers throughout their struggle:

“I want to express our sincere appreciation for making our strike known across the globe. The timely support and solidarity boosted workers’ morale, strengthened their resolve to fight and gave them the feeling that they are not alone, that workers across the world are with them. This assurance was a big motivating factor. “

This is a big one, and it’s taken several days for the union in India and the global union federation in Geneva to reach agreement on a text.

But now that we have it, let’s pull out all stops in support of these workers!

The campaign is here.

With the agreement of the IMF, we’re today closing the Hanjin campaign – which was not one of our largest, having gotten only 3,160 supporters.  However, this campaign – like all others in the last 4 months – has gotten a considerably greater amount of attention on Facebook (644 recommendations), thanks to the prominent placing of a Facebook ‘recommend’ link on the campaign page.

Campaigns earlier in the year that got considerably more support (such as Bangladesh: Free Moshrefa Mishu, Pakistan: Reinstate sacked trade union leader at Syngenta, Mexico: Defend trade union rights, and Chile: Government Reneges on Mine Safety Standards; Demand Reform) all got far fewer recommendations on Facebook.