Inside LabourStart

We’ll be holding our 2010 LabourStart conference in Canada and have to choose which of two dates works best for most of us.  Please use the comments to reply to this so everyone can see who can attend when and the decision making process will be more transparent.  (In other words, please do not email Eric or Derek about this – let us all know in the comments.)

The two possible dates are:

• 18 – 20 June
• 9 – 11 July

Nine days into our ad campaign on Facebook to promote interest in UnionBook, here are the results:

• Our ad was shown 1,984,996 times to Facebook users (in the UK only).
• It was clicked on 572 times.
• The cost to us was US$ 299.76.
• The number of new users picked up through this campaign – UK users who’ve joined in the last few days — is 3.  (We’ve gotten more new users signed up in Canada and Germany during the same period, with no ad campaign and no cost.)
• Price per new user US$ 100.00.

I don’t think this is a judicious use of our money at the moment, and I’ve suspended the campaign.

Stage one was the Facebook ads campaign.  We’ve now shown over a million ads (1,067,344 to be precise), bringing UnionBook over 300 new visitors, some of whom have signed up.

Stage two was to write to all current users (nearly 5,000) plus all those in our Facebook UnionBook group (614 members) to tell them to become active again, that we’ve clobbered the spammers and restored messaging — and that there’s a new UnionBook group in support of the Vale Inco strikers.

The next stage — weekly mailings to UnionBook members telling them what’s new, giving them reason to be active on the site.

A number of comrades use LinkedIn, so I thought it appropriate to launch a LabourStart group there.  Not sure how much time and effort to invest in this, but it’s worth looking into, I think.

Almost by accident I connected with Marc Belanger (ex-CUPE, ex-ACTRAV/ILO, long-time LabourStart supporter) and the subject of a LabourStart podcast came up, as discussed at the Washington conference. It turns out that Marc has something rather sophisticated (technically and content-wise) in the works with a 2010 start date. Rather than compete we’re going to see if we can’t co-operate.

The show, which will be hosted by Marc, will feature news about union activities around the globe. The 20 minute audiocast, called Solidarity News, will be presented on www.radiolabour.net every Monday.

We should try and put the word out about the show, though at this point Marc is just looking for volunteer correspondents. I’ve volunteered to do a regular segment on our Top Stories. This could mean a whole new audience for us.

Volunteer reporters would provide one or two minute English-language audio reports about union activities in their region of the world. The reporters would be expected to provide their audio-report (as an MP3 file) and a written script of the report. To volunteer, or find out more about the project, email Marc at: m.belanger@radiolabour.org.

Within minutes of launch our Twitter petition in support of the Vale Inco workers became the most popular petition of the day on act.ly; 24 hours after launch we have just under 400 supporters.  At present, we’re the 7th most popular Twitter petition ever — and within a couple of hours, we should be the 4th.

Of course this is not success — success would be getting the company to back down and negotiate with the workers.

Nevertheless, we’ve obviously caught the imagination of some activists and stirred up some excitement.  Oh, and unlike some other campaigning tools, we’ve been able to use this to increase our campaigning capacity.  We’ve managed to recruit a not-inconsiderable number of new Twitter followers (now up to 1,819).

Vale Inco, the global mining giant at war with its employees, has not responded — yet — to the more than 6,200 people who’ve sent them email protest messages through LabourStart.

I’ve just learned that the company is using Twitter to recruit new employees — including this lovely Tweet:

“Many jobs available in our Manitoba Operations! Visit www.valeinco.com/careers to check them out!”

So I’ve just launched the first-ever global union Twitter petition which we will now begin promoting far and wide, hoping that it goes viral.

This tactic was used very effectively last week by American Rights at Work, which got over 1,000 Twitterers to challenge the US Chamber of Commerce — and a lot of free publicity.

Now let’s see what we can to Vale Inco on a global scale using this new tool.  Please promote this URL:

http://act.ly/1es

This is our new ad appearing on Facebook — if you live in the U.K.

According to Facebook, the ad will be seen by potentially 20 million users over the age of 18.

With the amount we’re prepared to invest in showing the ad, it should be clicked through about 180 times per day, which could generate over time a considerable number of new UnionBook users.

We’re doing this now because we just taken steps to prevent spammers from signing on to UnionBook — all new users must be individually approved, and all must tell us which union they belong to.

We’ve also re-enabled messaging within UnionBook — this is important because, among other things, it allows UnionBook to let us know when new applicants have signed up so that we can promptly approve them.

We’ll run with this ad for a few days and I’ll report back here.

We have six more weeks until the end of the year and I thought I’d share with you some of the things that we’ll be doing in that time:

1. Finalizing the date and venue for our 2010 conference.
2. Launching more campaigns – the next one likely to be another campaign in support of Sinter Metal workers in Turkey.
3. Renewing UnionBook now that we seem to have largely cracked the problem of (new) spammers.  This will include some serious publicity to involve more people, and the launch of new groups.
4. Another survey of our readers — probably once again on the subject of campaigns.
5. Preparation for the launch of our Labour Video of the Year competition — and joint work with the DC Metro Labor Council on databases of labour films and labour film festivals.
6. Announcing the end of the Labour Website of the Year competition.