Apr
30
2012
0

New campaign launched – Thailand; Old campaign closed – Greece

This is a campaign we’ve supported in various ways for some time now, but ICEM has now asked us to do it as a proper ActNOW campaign: Free Somyot!

The Greek campaign launched in January has now been closed – it got just under 10,000 messages sent.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Apr
30
2012
0

Workshop Materials [Derek Blackadder]

I know that several of us regularly conduct workshops related to online campaigning. This week I’m doing a two-day session for staff of the Canadian Union of Public Employees in the province of Saskatchewan on social media (broadly defined). A portion, about three hours, covers legal issues that are specific to Canada, but I think the remainder could easily be adapted for use elsewhere.

If anyone would like the materials, such as they are, let me know and I would be happy to share.

And if anyone out there has their own materials…

Written by derek in: Uncategorized | Tags:
Apr
29
2012
0

Weekly roundup, 23-29 April 2012

Some highlights of the last week:

Campaigns closing: The Peru campaign was closed down.  We asked about closing the Greece campaign, still waiting to hear from the comrades there.  The Canada (Acadia) campaign was closed.   The Netherlands cleaners campaign was closed.

Campaigns starting: We launched the MMP lock-out campaign for Unite on Tuesday.  We will shortly be launching another campaign in support of a jailed Thai trade unionist at the request of ICEM.

Campaign problems: Some people are still managing to send multiple messages to the same campaign using the same email address.  I’ve taken further steps to block this and will check to see if it’s working now.  I’ve also noted that increasingly our server struggles to cope with hundreds of simultaneous requests when we launch a new campaign.  I took some steps to tighten up our code (and reduce the number of steps one has to take).  We may need to consider moving the campaign software to a separate, dedicated server.  (There are, of course, cost implications in doing so.)

North Korea: I’ve begun work on trying to highlight the situation of workers in the hermit kingdom – and we now have a special North Korea page on LabourStart at http://nk.labourstart.org.

LinkedIn: Our group there continues to grow (842 members, with no effort on our part to promote this) – and they now get a weekly message from me.  Last week’s launched our May Day appeal for support.

Facebook: We’re seeing a huge spike in Facebook Insights – more people than ever before are forwarding on, commenting on, and liking stuff we post.  Our last “reach” is 21,232 in the last week; a month ago, it was 2,910.  That’s an increase of more than 700% in one month.

May Day appeal: This went live 6 days ago with a mass mailing to our English list.  Details on how much we have raised so far and how we’ve promoted this appear on the May Day appeal page here.  At the moment, we’ve raised £969 in 6 days.

May Day event: Our May Day event on Facebook has attracted 372 people; I’ve been able to message them and the more than 3,100 who have been invited by those people.  Hopefully, we’ll have many more by Tuesday.

May Day book: We’ve agreed to coordinate sales of a new graphic novel about May Day with our partners at UCS.  Details on Monday.

Union Solidarity International (USI): This is a new initiative by a number of British unions, spearheaded by Unite the Union.  The suggested a meeting, and I duly met with their coordinator.  They are going live on May Day and have asked to work with us.

Apr
27
2012
0

North Korea

North Korean propaganda poster.

Behind the propaganda, the reality is bleak for North Korean workers.

It’s “North Korea Freedom Week” – I’ll be you didn’t know that – and I was able to hear first hand from three North Korean refugees at a meeting at the House of Commons in London on Wednesday just what life is like in that country.   (There were also speakers from other groups, including Amnesty International.)  One of the points made at the meeting was that considering that the human rights situation in North Korea is so poor, perhaps the worst in the world, it is extraordinary how few people raise this issue.  The North Korean regime clearly benefits from the fact that so little attention is paid to violations of human rights there.

LabourStart is not alone in the international trade union movement in having very little information about what goes on in North Korea.  If you read the annual report on violations of trade union rights published by the ITUC, the section on ‘violations’ in North Korea is empty.  (It’s about 500 words long when it comes to, for example, Israel.)  The ILO’s committee on free association mentions Korea 38 times in its March 2012 report – but all 38 are references to South Korea, where unions enjoy a degree of independence some of us have witnessed first-hand.

Trade unionists around the world need to be made aware of the actual situation of workers in North Korea. Which is where we come in — we have look for information and get the information out there.  For that reason, as of this afternoon we have three countries called Korea in our list of countries where previously there was only one.  Stories specifically focussed on South or North Korea can now be separated out.  The first story about North Korea appears today on our front page — and I hope there will be many more.

Written by admin in: News database |
Apr
27
2012
0

Speeding up the campaigns; internal message spam

As our campaigns have grown, increasingly people are finding that they get error messages after clicking on a ‘submit’ button.  I don’t mean error messages from the target — I mean our own scripts fail to execute.  Clearly our server is under strain when several hundred people try to simultaneously send off messages.  This will require a long term fix, both in terms of tweaking our software to speed things up, and possibly even moving the campaigns onto a different, faster server.

As a first step towards making things more efficient, I’ve finally removed the unnecessary second stage – the one where you confirm you want to send off your message.  It’s now a one-click process.  You fill in the form, and you get the screen telling you it’s been done.

On another matter, some idiot has decided to try to spam all our correspondents using our internal messaging system.  This will take a while to secure and to remove the spam content already sent (not all of you will have seen this).  Meanwhile, I’ve shut down the display of such messages until I can fix this.

Written by admin in: Campaigns,News database |
Apr
25
2012
0

Campaigns: out with the old, in with the new

I can’t really remember a time where we have started and finished so many campaigns in a single week.  Here’s a brief summary of eight campaigns in a state of transition – full details on the “Our Campaigns” page.

Two new campaigns —

UK: First employer lock-out in over 50 years – new campaign launched yesterday at the request of Britain’s largest union, Unite, and UNI Global Union.

Global: Tell the IOC to Get Rio Tinto Off the Podium! – launched ten days ago, already over 5,000 messages sent. The first global campaign ever launched while I was on holiday — well done to Derek, Andy and the others who worked on this.

Four closed campaigns —

Netherlands: Support striking cleaners – closed today with a near-record 10,984 supporters and a clear victory. This will be spelled out in a message to our lists today.

Peru: Stop union-busting, reinstate sacked union leaders – closed with over 6,000 messages sent, at the request of the Solidarity Center.

Serbia: Free jailed Kosovar union leader Hasan Abazi – closed after just 17 days with more than 7,500 messages sent. Hasan was released on bail and returned home.

Canada: End the lockout at Acadian Coach Lines – closed at the request of the union which reported that negotiations begin in a few days. Over 6,700 messages sent.

Two campaigns closing soon —

Bahrain: Free jailed trade union leader Mahdi ‘Issa Mahdi Abu Dheeb – will close tomorrow unless I hear otherwise from the Education International. Over 8,300 messages sent in the last 3 months.

Greece: Trade union leaders arrested following protests – will close soon as the campaign has been running far too long; have asked TUC and ITUC and waiting to hear from the Greek comrades. Over 9,900 messages sent.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Apr
23
2012
0

May Day Appeal 2012

Check out the page – I’ll indicate there what we’ve done, how much we’ve raised, and so on.

Written by admin in: Fund-raising |
Apr
23
2012
0

Weekly roundup: 7.4 – 23.4 (well, not exactly weekly)

As I was travelling overseas from 13-20 April, I have missed the chance to update you on some things happening at LabourStart. Here’s a quick roundup of the last 16 days …

Speaking and Writing: I have begun organizing a panel discussion on online activism due to take place in London at the annual “Ideas for Freedom” conference in the last week of June. I’ll be one of the speakers and am recruiting others from the large campaigning organizations. I reviewed my chapter in a forthcoming book, the third annual anthology of Global Labour Columns (published by the Global Labour University). The chapter is about the future of online campaigning, and focusses mostly on the LabourStart experience. More details when the book becomes available.

Campaigns: I fixed the campaign software to make it more difficult – and I hope, impossible – for individuals to participate more than once in the same campaign using the same email address. There was a loophole in the system which had previously allowed this. We’ve been given permission to close a number of campaigns, including Peru, Canada (Acadia), and Serbia (Hasan Abazi). Every month I review all the active campaigns and check which have not yet been translated and follow up with our volunteers; as a result, campaigns typically appear now in 10 languages, with mailings sent out in nearly all of those as well. My article on the Matteo Parlati campaign appeared in German in the Jungle World weekly newspaper.

Facebook: I made a number of improvements to the LabourStart page, including a large horizontal banner (which I’ve updated) and links. I also created a Facebook event for May Day.

Global Union Federations: I’ve confirmed my participation, primarily as a journalist, at the upcoming congresses of the IUF (May) and IMF, ICEM and ITGLWF (June). The latter is the launch congress for IndustriALL and will be held in Copenhagen.

Israel: I had meetings at the Histadrut with international relations department head Avital Shapira and with Jacob Avid of the Hanoar Haoved youth movement (Jacob attended our Istanbul conference). I also met in East Jerusalem with Assaf Adiv and colleagues from WAC Ma’an.

Written by admin in: Campaigns,Social networks |
Apr
08
2012
0

Hootsuite,Twitter and Facebook [Derek Blackadder]

I’ve been using Hootsuite’s delayed posting feature to try and keep the Canadian Twitter feeds active around the clock. Partly because the RSS feature in Hootsuite doesn’t work as well as I would like it to.

Just FYI, in case anyone else wants to do something similar, here are the texts I have been repeating. In English only as I am not confident enough of my own fluency, nor of Google’s.

ROUTINE:

Get (and leave if you want) your photos here! The global union movement’s photo album, a LabourStart project. ow.ly/9UIbb

Unionbook – the social networking platform for trade unionists. A LabourStart project. ow.ly/9UIsC

Union photographer? If you have a photo you would like to see as the LabourStart Photo of the Week, send to CanadaATLabourStart.org

Dress up your website or blog with LabourStart’s FREE newswires. By country or issue, or tell us what you need! ow.ly/9UK1b

Get Your Union Books at Labour’s Bookstore – a LabourStart-UCS project. ow.ly/9UKWQ

Union women daily news at LabourStart’s Working Women page: ow.ly/9UKAk

LabourStart’s mailing list about to hit 100k. Our costs 2 go up. Victim of our own success? If u or ur union can help: ow.ly/a3gyp

LabourStart will soon be available in 28 languages. Our Ukrainian edition is almost ready to roll.

Act NOW! All of LabourStart’s active solidarity campaigns are here: http://ow.ly/a8WvO

CAMPAIGNS:

URGENT ACTION NEEDED. Union leader held in Serbian solitary confinement. Send protest e-mail in 20 seconds here: ow.ly/a7p0m

Please retweet! URGENT ACTION NEEDED. Trade unionist in Iran facing execution at any moment. Send protest message here: ow.ly/9T1wU

Colombia: End harassment and killing of trade unionists. Join the global e-mail campaign here: ow.ly/a6mEs

Help end the months-long lockout at Acadian Coach Lines! Send a solidarity message here: ow.ly/9KCA7

Written by derek in: Uncategorized | Tags: ,
Apr
06
2012
0

New campaign launched on Good Friday: Kosovar trade union leader arrested in Serbia

This is terrible news – and we’ve been asked by the IMF to make this an urgent action.  It’s a long holiday weekend, but let’s see if we can get the attention of the Serbian government …

Written by admin in: Campaigns |

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