Inside LabourStart

Annual survey: We’ve gone up from 500 responses to 2,082. We still need 872 more to beat last year’s record. We got an article on the TUC blog, Stronger Unions, which has helped boost interest in the UK.  We’ll stop collecting responses in just 13 more days — on 19 March.

Site re-design: I incorporated most of the comments made by comrades on what I did so far. Masha, who is a professional graphic designer, is going to suggest a new logo design soon — once we have that, we can go live, first with the English version. The draft site is here.

Campaigns: We launched our Turkey campaign and it’s already up to 8,613 supporters. We closed down the Bahrain and Netherlands FNV campaigns (see separate posts for reports.) Edd and I both did articles about the Turkey campaign for Solidarity and the New Left Project (a website).

Book 1 (Online campaigning): The French edition has been created and is available for purchase. Sales of both editions have now reached 611, with another 43 free copies given out, for a total of 654. We’ve now paid for ‘extended distribution’ meaning that the books (in English and French) will be available in bookshops and from other online retailers, including Amazon Canada.

Book 2 (Global labour movement): Edd and I are working hard on this one, aiming to get it ready by May Day. In addition to what we’re writing, we solicited submissions from a number of comrades and are pleased that we’ll have contributions from ICTUR, Amnesty, the Global Labour Institutes, the TUC and others. See more details here: http://www.labourstart.org/blogs/?p=2818

Internationalization: We’ll have campaigns in Slovak starting this week. All our campaigns have been translated into Esperanto and our translation group in that language now has 8 members. I’ve contributed an article (an interview, of sorts) for an Austrian Esperanto magazine about LabourStart. We’ll have a Korean interface for our news later today.

Fundraising: We now have a venue and date for our London May Day fundraiser – May 4th, 19:30 at the Bread and Roses pub.  Two months before the event, 77 people say they are coming or may be coming.

Public speeches: I spoke at the Unison Wales Women’s Development Weekend in Swansea on Saturday to an audience of about 26; I sold all 10 of the online campaigning books I brought with me. Next Wednesday, Edd and I (and Anita Gardner of IndustriALL) will be on a panel at the e-Campaigning Forum in Oxford. On March 31st, I’ve been invited to speak at a fringe meeting of the annual conference in Bournemouth of the teachers union NASUWT. In addition, Napo – the probation officers union – has asked me to run a workshop on social media.

Social Networks: We now have a page on Google+ which, according to our survey, is widely used by trade unionists.

App for smartphones and tablets: I’m completing one this week for the IUF and when done, I’ll know how to do the one for LabourStart.

The numbers in brackets are for the previous month. Strong gains are highlighted in bold.

Mailing lists

English: 76,322 [75,280]
French: 5,893 [5,922]
Spanish: 4,504 [4,392]
Italian: 3,888 [3,889]
Turkish: 3,116 [3,106]
German: 2,614 [2,586]
Norwegian: 2,369 [2,344]
Russian: 1,951 [1,935]
Dutch: 885 [803]
Chinese: 716 [708]
Finnish: 546 [187]
Polish: 318 [312]
Arabic: 252 [231]
Portuguese: 246 [243]
Japanese: 240 [230]
Hebrew: 208 [208]
Farsi: 207 [206]
Tagalog: 205
Swedish: 183 [183]
Korean 150 [143]
Danish: 144 [144]
Indonesian : 109
Czech: 96

Social networks

Twitter followers –
English: 8,659 [8,441]

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 6,327 [6,098]
Members of LabourStart group: 4,909 [4,884]
Like LabourStart page (French): 279 [267]
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 92 [87]

UnionBook –
Members: 5,440 [5,417]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 1,194 [1,153 ]

Union group on Flickr: 720 [719]

Website

Correspondents: 613 [741]

The numbers in brackets are for the previous month. Strong gains are highlighted in bold.

Key developments:

• We’ve moved from MailChimp to Sendy for nearly all our lists now.
• We now have 28 mailing list languages.
• 20 of those lists have 100 or more subscribers.  We are currently mailing to all 20 of those lists.
• The 8 small lists are Indonesian, Czech, Esperanto, Bulgarian, Greek, Creole, Vietnamese and Tagalog.
• The number of correspondents has dropped dramatically (308 so far) as we get rid of the completely inactive ones.

Mailing lists

Total for all lists: 103,324 [104,515]

1. English: 75,280 [75,213]
2. French: 5,922 [5,932]
3. Spanish: 4,392 [4,356]
4. Italian: 3,889 [3,879]
5. Turkish: 3,106 [3,111]
6. German: 2,586 [2,551]
7. Norwegian: 2,344 [2,333]
8. Russian: 1,935 [1,949]
9. Dutch: 803 [781]
10. Chinese: 708 [629]
11. Polish: 312 [310]
12. Portuguese: 243 [243]
13. Arabic: 231 [184]
14. Japanese: 230 [ 209]
15. Hebrew: 208 [208]
16. Farsi: 206 [201]
17. Finnish: 187 [186]
18. Swedish: 183 [185]
19. Danish: 144 [146]
20. Korean 143 [93]

Social networks

UnionBook –
Members: 5,417 [5,389]

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 6,098 [5,877]
Members of LabourStart group: 4,884 [4,849]
Like LabourStart page (French): 267 [245]
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 87 [74]

Twitter followers –
English: 8,441 [8,115]

Union group on Flickr: 719 [718]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 1,153 [1,114]

Website

Correspondents: 741 [1,049]
Site visits: 597,018 [599,459]

The numbers in brackets are for the previous month. Strong gains are highlighted in bold.

Mailing lists
Total for all lists: 104,515 [104,764]

English: 75,213 [75,686]
French: 5,932 [5,857]
Spanish: 4,356 [4,337]
Italian: 3,879 [3,879]
Turkish: 3,111 [3,112]
German: 2,551 [2,549]
Norwegian: 2,333 [2,328]
Russian: 1,949 [1,948]
Dutch: 781 [740]
Chinese: 629 [553]
Polish: 310 [310]
Portuguese: 243 [243]
Japanese: 209 [ 209]
Hebrew: 208 [207]
Farsi: 201 [201]
Finnish: 186 [186]
Swedish: 185 [186]
Arabic: 184 [183]
Danish: 146 [146]

And just below the radar:

Korean 93 [93]
Indonesian 84 [81]

Social networks

UnionBook –
Members: 5,389 [5,371]

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 5,877 [5,715]
Members of LabourStart group: 4,849 [4,824]
Like LabourStart page (French): 245 [240]
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 74 [72]

Twitter followers –
English: 8,115 [7,921]

Union group on Flickr: 718 [712]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 1,114 [1,100]

Website

Correspondents: 1,049 [1,043]
Site visits: 599,459

The mailing lists grew by a net total of 587, which is not bad. The three largest growths were English (up by 292), French (up 48) and Hebrew (up 18 – a gain of 10%).

Our Facebook page also shot up by 261 new likes this month, a gain of 5%. The Facebook page is growing 7 times as fast as the Facebook group, and today has nearly 1,000 more members.

The largest gain, however, was the growth in followers on Twitter – up by 318 in the last month, and now just under 8,000.

Mailing lists

Total for all lists: 104,764 [104,177] +587

English: 75,686 [75,394] +292
French: 5,857 [5,809] +48
Spanish: 4,337 [4,329] +8
Italian: 3,879 [3,884]
Turkish: 3,112 [3,111] +1
German: 2,549 [2,538] +11
Norwegian: 2,328 [2,329]
Russian: 1,948 [1,949]
Dutch: 740 [740]
Chinese: 553 [551] +2
Polish: 310 [310]
Portuguese: 243 [244] +1
Japanese: 209 [ 209]
Hebrew: 207 [189] +18
Farsi: 201 [201]
Finnish: 186 [184] +2
Swedish: 186 [186]
Arabic: 183 [177] +6
Danish: 146 [146]

And just below the radar:

Korean 93 [93]
Indonesian 81 [76] +5

Social networks

UnionBook –
Members: 5,371 [5,342] +29

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 5,715 [5,454] +261
Members of LabourStart group: 4,824 [4,787] +37
Like LabourStart page (French): 240 [237] +3
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 72 [71] +1

Twitter followers –
English: 7,921 [7,603] +318

Union group on Flickr: 712 [709] +3

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 1,100 [1,054] +46

Website

Correspondents: 1,043 [1,042]

Growth was slow this month – though the previous figures are from only 3 weeks ago.  Nevertheless we’re seeing a shrinking of most of our larger mailing lists (as bad addresses are routinely dropped).  What would grow us now is a very large campaign …

Mailing lists

Total for all lists: 104,177 [104,296]

English: 75,394 [75,597]
French: 5,809 [5,813]
Spanish: 4,329 [4,338]
Italian: 3,884 [3,872]
Turkish: 3,111 [3,114]
German: 2,538 [2,546]
Norwegian: 2,329 [2,344]
Russian: 1,949 [1,950]
Dutch: 740 [739]
Chinese: 551 [503]
Polish: 310 [308]
Portuguese: 244 [244]
Japanese: 209 [ 209]
Farsi: 201 [201]
Hebrew: 189 [189]
Swedish: 186 [187]
Finnish: 184 [184]
Arabic: 177 [169]
Danish: 146 [150]

And just below the radar:

Korean 93 [93]
Indonesian 76 [74]

Social networks

UnionBook –
Members: 5,342 [5,322]

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 5,454 [5,289]
Members of LabourStart group: 4,787 [4,778]
Like LabourStart page (French): 237 [234]
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 71 [67]

Twitter followers –
English: 7,603 [7,418]

Union group on Flickr: 709 [701]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 1,054 [1,037]

Website

Correspondents: 1,042 [1,028]

To be fair, I was away for more than a week …

Intern: We had 12 applicants. Derek Blackadder (Canada) and John Wood (UK) helped me prepare a shortlist of 4, who will be interviewed on Monday, 22 October. Roger Darlington has volunteered to assist with the interviews.

Conference: We’re working hard to build this — it’s only 6 weeks away. We did a mailing on 24.9 to our lists in Australia and New Zealand. I’ve provided the organizers with a list of who to invite from the region, and have been in touch with several others from outside the region whose flights we are subsidizing.

New campaigns: We launched a campaign in support of workers in Guatemala; we ran a short and sharp campaign in support of jailed Turkish trade unionists; we launched a campaign in support of labour NGOs in China facing repression.

Closed campaigns: I closed down five campaigns – China (Li Wang Yang), UK (RMT Olympics), Turkey (Togo), Morocco and Kazakhstan.

Labour book of the month: I’ve revived this, and in the first 4 days, we sold over $600 worth of books.

Facebook: I tested the promotion of one of the posts on our page. This was the post – “Over 300 dead textile workers in Pakistan – demand justice! Support the online campaign!” It was seen by 63,151 people, 713 of them liked it, 23 commented on it, and 150 shared it. A typical post on Facebook is seen by a tiny fraction of that — usually around 5,000 people. The cost was $100.

Sponsorship of LabourStart UK: UIA, which provides insurance cover for union members here, now has a banner on our UK website, for which they are paying us.

Ukrainian: We have a new newswire in Ukrainian, following a request. I’ve also provided them with a list of country names for translation.

Urdu: We had an offer to translate our Pakistan campaign, but there’s been no translation yet.

Swedish & Danish: We’ve done a mailing to our small lists in these two languages to try to recruit new correspondents and translators.

South Africa: I’ve written both to all our existing correspondents and to hundreds of our readers there in an effort to get more active correspondents.

Brochure distribution: I’ve recruited three volunteers to help me distribute LabourStart brochures at Saturday’s giant demonstration and march organized by the Trades Union Congress in London.

This is 10 days late because I was away during the first week of October. There are no website stats this time because I wasn’t able to access them this morning and didn’t want to delay publication of this report any further.

Some highlights:

Net growth of mailing lists is still strong, with over 2,500 new subscribers this month. The biggest gain was the English list, which picked up a net gain of over 2,000. I’m now listing Indonesian at the bottom as we’re doing regular mailings to this small list, and running regular campaigns in Indonesian now.

On Facebook, likes to our page continue to grow considerably faster than membership in our group, which is what we want. This month we had a gain of 333 new likes to the page and only 6 new members of the group.

Twitter is growing more slowly, up only 251 this month, but we still have far more followers on Twitter than we have likes on Facebook. (7,418 Twitter followers vs 5,289 fans on Facebook).

On LinkedIn, despite no effort by us, we’ve now soared past the 1,000 barrier, having picked up 46 new members of our group there. That’s only one fewer than the number of new members of UnionBook (which grew by only 47 during this period).

Mailing lists

Total for all lists: 104,296 [101,775]

English: 75,597 [73,544]
French: 5,813 [5,777]
Spanish: 4,338 [4,177]
Italian: 3,872 [3,868]
Turkish: 3,114 [2,989]
German: 2,546 [2,497]
Norwegian: 2,344 [2,301]
Russian: 1,950 [1,945]
Dutch: 739 [738]
Chinese: 503 [500]
Polish: 308 [306]
Portuguese: 244 [243]
Japanese: 209 [ 209]
Farsi: 201 [201]
Hebrew: 189 [177]
Swedish: 187 [189]
Finnish: 184 [184]
Arabic: 169 [160]
Danish: 150 [153]

And just below the radar:

Korean 93 [93]
Indonesian 74

Social networks

UnionBook –
Members: 5,322 [5,275]

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 5,289 [4,956]
Members of LabourStart group: 4,778 [4,772]
Like LabourStart page (French): 234 [222]
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 67 [60]

Twitter followers –
English: 7,418 [7,167]

Union group on Flickr: 701 [698]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 1,037 [991]

Website

Correspondents: 1,028 [1,013]

Highlights this month –

Though August is traditionally a quiet month, and this is reflected in the lack of growth for the top mailing lists, we had a huge growth in our Turkish list (up by more than 50%, a gain of over 1,000 subscribers) and the German list grew by 202 subscribers, a gain of nearly 10%. In social networks, we’re rapidly approaching 5,000 ‘likes’ for our Facebook page in English, with another nearly 300 in French and Turkish. We’re just under 1,000 members of our LinkedIn group – which we’ve done absolutely nothing to publicize. We’re finally over 1,000 correspondents (and will need to soon starting weeding out the inactive ones). Finally, visits to the website soared for some reason in August, with a gain of almost 20% in unique visits and an additional 150,000 page views compared to July.

Mailing lists

Total for all lists: 101,775 [100,331]

English: 73,544 [73,474]
French: 5,777 [5,777]
Spanish: 4,177 [4,163]
Italian: 3,868 [3,873]
Turkish: 2,989 [1,897]
German: 2,497 [2,292]
Norwegian: 2,301 [2,281]
Russian: 1,945 [1,947]
Dutch: 738 [736]
Chinese: 500 [496]
Polish: 306 [306]
Portuguese: 243 [247]
Japanese: 209 [ 209]
Farsi: 201 [186]
Swedish: 189 [194]
Finnish: 184 [184]
Hebrew: 177 [157]
Danish: 153 [156]
Arabic: 160 [156]

And just below the radar:

Korean 93 [93]

Social networks

UnionBook –
Members: 5,275 [5,227]

Facebook –
Like LabourStart.org page (English): 4,956 [4,787]
Members of LabourStart group: 4,772 [4,762]
Like LabourStart page (French): 222 [213]
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 60

Twitter followers –
English: 7,167 [6,920]

Union group on Flickr: 698 [694]

LinkedIn – LabourStart group: 991 [951]

Website

Correspondents: 1,013 [994]

Unique visits to the site this month : 599,990 [509,378]
Peak day: 23,064 [23.8.12]
Page views this month: 1,312,682 [1,164,243]

New office: Now moved in; Internet access being set up today. This has taken up a lot of time over the last couple of weeks, and not everything is here yet, and there are still boxes on the floor, but it’s a working office – our very first.

Campaigns: The Spanish miners’ campaign, our first with IndustriALL, is now closed. The Zimbabwe campaign was launched last week, as was the Siemens USA campaign. A fortnightly update was sent to all our campaign partners.

Articles: My article on the case of Kamal Abbas in Egypt was picked up by In These Times (USA), and run in their web edition. In the German newspaper Jungle World (print and web edition) my article on the subject of anti-union violent repression appeared.

Courses: I met in Brussels yesterday with two staffers from the European Trade Union Institute to discuss a course I will help run with them on the subject of online campaigning.

Facebook: We now have a page on Facebook in Turkish.