Apr
06
2010
0

What makes a great union short film?

Joshua Amberg, one of the judges of this year’s LabourStart labour video of the year competition, asked all the others (and me) to give their answers to the above question.  He’s published these on his blog, Look Back: Labor and the Moving Image.  Interesting reading.

Written by ericlee in: Labour video of the year |
Apr
01
2010
0

And the winner is …

What have the unions ever done for us?

What have the unions ever done for us?

The brilliant Australian video What have the unions ever done for us? is the winner of the first-ever global labour video of the year competition.

We had just under 3,000 votes cast, which is extraordinary as we had a similar number for the photo of the year competition, but this required a much greater investment of time by participants.

I’ll be announcing the final totals to our subscribers shortly, but you can see the complete breakdown here.

The results are a top story on LabourStart, and I have also blogged about them on Amnesty International’s website.

One positive result of this competition was the addition of 1,435 new subscribers to our mailing list this morning.

Written by ericlee in: Labour video of the year |
Mar
30
2010
0

Our competition massively boosts number of viewers of union videos

Here’s what has happened to the videos nominated in our competition (which ends tomorrow) — this is the growth in the last 3 weeks in the number of views of each video:

  • Just another cog  in the machine: 23,024 – 26,930 (+3,906)
  • Climate change: 1,303 – 4,047 (+2,744)
  • Vale Fuhrer: 10,109 – 13,877 (+3,768)
  • The Janitor: 70 – 2,994 (+2,924)
  • CUPE 3903: 103 – 2,816 (+2,713)
  • What have the unions ever done for us?: 176,593 – 182,428 (+5,835)

As about 2,800 people have voted, it seems like nearly all of them are viewing all the videos.  This is especially clear when looking at the two highlighted videos which had practically no viewers before we launched our competition, and have experienced a 30-40 fold increase in viewership thanks to our effort.

Written by ericlee in: Labour video of the year |
Mar
11
2010
0

More updates, briefly

Conference 2010: We’ve got a registration page up, not yet for public consumption.  We also have written to Labor Notes about purchasing a full page ad in their own conference program book.  And we’re making a special effort to attract women trade unionists to our conference, and to fund travel for women from developing countries to attend.

Labour Video of the Year: So far, over 1,300 votes cast in less than two days.

TUC campaign in support of Iraqi teachers: We did a mailing to our 5,000 or so UK subscribers. This boosted support for the campaign from 12 (after 2 weeks in which British unions did little or nothing to promote) to 118.

Guyana campaign: We’ve gotten the green light from ICEM to launch this — should be sometime soon.

New campaign for Mexico: UE and the ICEM have green lighted this as well — we’re waiting for some clarifications before launch.

And this too:The support of LabourStart was vital to the Green Isle Foods dispute because the parent company, Northern Foods, was largely insulated from the dispute in Ireland in terms of public relations, even though local management said everything discussed in local discussions had to be referred to Leeds for a decision.  The Irish mainstream media showed little interest in the dispute so that we were heavily reliant on alternatives. The fact that so many British trade unionists and consumers sent emails to Northern Foods brought home to the employer that there were consequences to bad behaviour, such as ignoring the Labour Court.  Many thanks, Padraig Yeates on  behalf of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union.”

Our 25th language? We have a new correspondent in Spain who speaks Basque …

Mar
10
2010
0

Some very brief updates …

I haven’t been updating this blog often enough — but LabourStart has been keeping us very busy these days …

Labour Video of the Year competition – voting began yesterday.  Over 800 votes cast in the first 24 hours.  Click here to watch the voting as it happens.

Global campaigns – We launched a campaign in support of Mexican miners last week.  3,112 supporters so far and the campaign is available in 7 languages.  Our campaign in support of imprisoned Turkish trade unionist Seher Tümer also has over 3,000 messages sent — in 7 languages as well.  The campaign we launched in support of hunger striking Irish workers ended with an agreement and was closed down within 6 days of launch. We will shortly be launching a campaign in support of workers in Guyana, at the request of the ICEM.

National campaigns – We have been asked both by the British TUC and the New Zealand union PSA to launch campaigns targetting only people in those countries.  The TUC campaign has been very slow to take off, but the New Zealand one has brought in well over 400 responses — adding many New Zealand trade unionists to our list. In addition, we did our first mailing to our thousands of Australian subscribers in support of a campaign there.

Travels – I continue to be invited to speak at union events around the world.  My upcoming travel schedule includes visits to Egypt, Turkey, Canada and Brazil — all within the next two months.  The last of these (not yet confirmed) is to speak at the SIGTUR congress for trade unionists from throughout the global south.  They are particularly keen on UnionBook.

Written by ericlee in: Campaigns,Labour video of the year,UnionBook |
Feb
23
2010
0

Nearly 300 videos submitted to Labour Video of the Year competition

The nominations phase is now over and there have been 299 nominations made.  This is a significant improvement over the Labour Photo of the Year, which saw only 189 submissions this year.  In other words, the Labour Video of the Year competition has obviously captured the imagination of our readers and is already a success.  I’ve closed the nominations and am turning things over the international panel of judges to come up with a shortlist.  Voting for the winning video will take place next month.

Written by ericlee in: Labour video of the year |
Feb
15
2010
0

Competition extended by one week

At the request of Chris Garlock, from the Washington DC Metro Labor Council, I’ve extended the deadline for submissions for the Labour Video of the Year competition by one week.  So far, there have been 165 submissions.  I used the opportunity to remind readers about several union films related resources, including LabourStart.tv, the Labour films group on UnionBook, the online labour films database and list of labour film festivals that we co-sponsor, and Tom Zaniello’s book, which we sell through UCS (and which is really one of our best-sellers).

Written by ericlee in: Labour video of the year |
Feb
10
2010
0

100 videos nominated!

The Labour Video of the Year competition has really taken off, with 100 videos already nominated.  For the complete list, see here.

Written by ericlee in: Labour video of the year |
Feb
03
2010
3

Labour video of the year [updated]

As we discussed at our conference in Washington last summer, LabourStart will this year be sponsoring the first ever global Labour Video of the Year competition.  Nominations are now open and the nominating form is here.  As nominations come through, you’ll be able to view them here.

Publicity is crucial for the success of this project, so here’s what we’re doing (this will be updated as more is done):

  1. Site publicized as a top global news story on LabourStart – and therefore on our global labour newswire
  2. It is also a news item on LabourStart.tv
  3. Posted to Twitter.
  4. Posted to Facebook – Eric Lee’s account.
  5. Posted to Facebook – LabourStart Group wall.
  6. Message sent to all 2,776 members of the LabourStart Facebook group.
  7. It’s a site-wide message on UnionBook, seen by anyone visiting the site.
  8. Message posted to the British TUC’s UnionReps site
  9. 5 Feb: Mailing to over 52,000 names on the English language LabourStart list.
  10. 8 Feb: Now this is great publicity! (Translation via Google: “Espen Løken in Industrial Energy calls for Norwegian videos from the workplace to an international competition organized by LabourStart”)
Written by ericlee in: Labour video of the year |

Powered by WordPress | Aeros Theme | TheBuckmaker.com WordPress Themes