Inside LabourStart

Thanks to the efforts of our friends and comrades we should shortly be launching some of our campaigns in Korean and in Arabic.  As Arabic is estimated to have anywhere between 150 – 250 million native speakers, and Korean to have 60 – 78 million native speakers, these are hugely important developments.  More details coming soon.

Three old campaigns have reached their “sell-by” date and I thought I’d let you know how we cope with this.

The Seher Tumer campaign (Turkey) has been extended a bit due to the very late translation into Turkish.  We want to give the Turkish comrades a chance to show their support.

The union in Guyana asked us today if we could extend the campaign, and I agree to do so for a month.

And I’ve just written to the UE asking if we can now suspend the 3-month old Mexico Pemex campaign.

All the other campaigns are two months old or less.

It’s not always easy to determine who is actually responsible for a campaign as sometimes we’re approached by several different GUFs or national unions and NGOs, and then when we do identify who’s in charge, getting agreement to close a campaign down is not always easy.

Still, it’s important that we do this, as we want to keep our (very long) list of active campaigns short and up-to-date.

• We’ve launched a new campaign in support of striking Dis-Chem workers in South Africa.  A campaign in support of Mexican workers in Cananea may come online next week; we’re liaising with ICEM about this one.
• We now know for sure of over 100 people attending our conference — with two thirds of them having paid registration fees in advance.
• My latest Labour and Technology podcast is now online, here.

We can go for weeks without getting a single request for a campaign, and then all at once everyone has an urgent action for us.  Today we’re likely to push three different campaigns on three continents:

• In Europe, a union in Turkey is asking for our help — and the ITF is encouraging us to be involved.  (I have just learned that the ITF has created the campaign on its website – so we will be linking to that.)
• In Africa, we’ve once again been asked by SACCAWU to help out in a dispute with a company.
• In Asia, we’re been approached a number of times around the arrest of a Thai labour activist.  The Clean Clothes Campaign has already launched this as an online campaign so we need only link to them.

And within the last ten days, we’ve launched our Apple/Foxconn campaign in China and at the request of the IUF asked people to support their West Bengal (India) tea workers campaign.

And these are only the campaigns that we’ve agreed to help out with … there are others that we say no to.  (E.g., the teachers union in Michigan and our comrades in Poland.)

Increasingly we’re forced to refuse help on the grounds that we need to stay focussed on workers rights — dealing with jailings and killings of trade unionists in particular — and cannot take up every difficult employer, for example.  It’s not always easy to make these decisions.

In light of this, I suggest we consider adding a sentence to what we have published online.

Here is what we currently say:

LabourStart runs online campaigns at the request of trade unions around the world. Our preference is for campaigns to be submitted by global union federations, national trade union centres and national unions, but will in some circumstances accept campaigns from local and branch unions. We do not normally accept campaigns submitted by individuals or NGOs which are not unions. Campaigns which would benefit from global exposure and support are more likely to be approved than campaigns that will be of no interest outside of your locality or country. Our campaigns run for three months and if the issues are not resolved by then, LabourStart reserves the right to suspend the campaign. Unions which request campaigns from us are expected to keep us updated and to promote the campaign to their own members and others. We never charge unions for running these campaigns and the service will always be free.

I suggest that we add:

Campaigns which focus on violations of workers’ rights are more likely to be adopted than campaigns in support of everyday issues which arise in relations with employers, such as problems negotiating a collective agreement.

Comments?

I’ve just sent out a special urgent action appeal to our list in English at the request of the IUF in support of this campaign.

Our new campaign is now live here:

http://www.labourstart.org/foxconn

I’ve done some basic publicity to our lists, via Facebook, UnionBook and Twitter, etc.

Please spread the word in your own organizations.

We’re currently talking with trade unionists in Hong Kong and Taiwan about launching a major online campaign to protest conditions at Foxconn, where the Apple iPad is being manufactured.  The suicides at this Taiwanese-owned factory are making top global news now, but efforts so far to organize a big online response have not been great.  I hope we have something up this weekend.

SNAPAP logo.

We were approached both by SNAPAP in Algeria (via Andy Funnel in France) and also by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center — who are bringing over two Algerian trade unionists to our conference in Hamilton.

The campaign is now live, here.

The short URL is http://tinyurl.com/snapap

This campaign, launched in early February, has now run its course.

Also, with events in Thailand it may seem odd to be focusing on this issue at this time.

By the end, the campaign attracted 4,039 letters of protest in 9 languages.  There have been no updates on the ITF site since we launched the campaign — as far as I can tell — and I’ve asked them for news.  If we’ve helped at all, we should tell our lists.

I will continue taking down campaigns after three months if we hear nothing from the unions.  The next up is the Turkish campaign for Seher Tumer, due to come down in another five days.

With 6,161 participants after just a week, our campaign protesting the Iranian regime’s murder of teacher trade unionist Farzad Kamangar is one of our largest ever.

By comparison, here are the current totals of other currently active campaigns and their launch dates:

• Philippines – Alta Mode: 3,159 (26 April)
• Taiwan – YFO: 3,906 (21 April)
• Iraq – Oil union: 2,954 (12 April)
• Mexico – PEMEX: 4,247 (14 March)
• Guyana – Bauxite: 2,645 (12 March)
• Mexico – Cananea: 3,795 (2 March)
• Turkey – Seher Tumer: 4,233 (26 February)
• Thailand – Railway workers: 4,039 (8 February – overdue for removal)