Jul
31
2012
2

Algeria campaign – closed; and the problem we continue to face

This campaign has been live for less than two months but we heard that it was no longer relevant (the hunger strike was over).  I contacted PSI, and it appears that they are without a trade union rights officer, so there was no one around to tell us this. I have closed the campaign today.  I remind all of us, especially those who request LabourStart campaigns, that our “contract” with our partners includes the following:

“Unions which request campaigns from us are expected to keep us updated . . . The union will keep LabourStart updated, ideally every few weeks, and the best way to do this is to have a volunteer correspondent regularly posting news which we will link to the campaign. . . . [After 3 months] the union will provide a report which we may circulate to supporters telling them what the effect of the campaign has been – not only whether the employer or government has conceded, but also whether the union members themselves were made aware of the international support shown to them and whether this boosted their morale.”

So, what do we do when this doesn’t happen?  Clearly we can’t just say to a global union — we won’t do campaigns with you any more.  That would be stupid and counter-productive.  If anyone has any ideas about how to ensure that unions keep us updated, especially about the need to close down a campaign which is no longer relevant — please add these to the comments.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Jul
28
2012
1

Weekly update: 11-28 July

This is a bit delayed because I was on holiday from 13-20 July but now back at work and making progress on several issues.  Here are some highlights:

Conference: Our organizing committee continues to function; I have a conference call scheduled with them for next week.

Correspondents: The internal messaging system is now fixed; there had been a problem before that spam could be sent, though not via email, to all correspondents.

Campaigns:

  • Closed: The Unite bus campaign in the UK was closed down following a victory. Another Unite campaign, in support of MMP workers, was closed down after three months.
  • I added a key to the flags and languages here.
  • We asked for and received the support of IndustriALL in the Kazakhstan campaign.
  • New campaigns launched in support of sacked trade unionists in Peru and Turkey, and RMT cleaners in London.
  • I fixed a bug in our special news pages for the UK, USA, Canada and Australia – we were not showing lists of the most current campaigns there, but we are now.
  • Closed and archived campaigns – When trying to view certain closed campaigns, you couldn’t actually call them up – but I’ve now fixed this and you can see any campaign. I fixed the display of supporters for a campaign which has been closed. There’s now an accessible archive of closed campaigns.

Office: I’ve begun an intensive search for a London office.

Mailing list: We now have more than 100,000 addresses.

Book: I was approached by UCS, our book-selling partner in the USA, about doing a primer for trade unionists on use of the net.  I’ve agreed to do so.  Details to follow.

Internationalization:

  • A problem was discovered with part of the display of the Turkish website; this is now nearly fixed.
  • Work began on a Ukrainian edition – also nearly complete.

Newswires: Two more unions added the labour newswire to their sites.

Fundraising:

  • The IUF has agreed to make a substantial donation to LabourStart.
  • In addition, we’ve received several large donations from Canadian unions.
  • We had 2,000 copies of our new fundraising brochure printed and I have begun mailing them out one by one to selected unions; the first target audience is Irish unions.
Jul
26
2012
0

Peru campaign launched

At the request of Peru’s largest national trade union centre, we’ve just launched this campaign in defense of a trade union leader sacked for “defaming” his employer on television.

Yup, that’s two campaigns in one day.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Jul
26
2012
0

Our third live campaign from Turkey

At the request of Deri-Is and Industriall, we’ve launched this campaign today in support of Togo Footwear workers, who were sacked for joining a union. This makes three out of the nine current campaigns Turkish ones.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Jul
26
2012
1

Another campaign bites the dust

Today I’m closing down Unite’s MMP campaign (UK). Thought the campaign generated nearly 7,000 messages, Unite officials have not been great about responding to our emails and we don’t actually know the results of this campaign yet. As a result of the closure of this campaign and the other Unite/ITF campaign two days ago, we now have only one UK campaign running – and this time it’s with the full and unambiguous support of the union (RMT).

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Jul
24
2012
0

Good news – and more good news

First of all, I am closing down the London bus drivers Olympics campaign today after one month online.

This campaign, launched with the support of the ITF and Unite, resulted in a big win for the workers. As Unite reported in a press release last week, “London bus workers have overwhelmingly voted to accept an offer of an Olympic award, meaning most workers will get £577 for the massive increase in workload over the Olympics.”

Bobby Morton, Acting National Passenger Officer for Unite, wrote: “On behalf of Unite the Union I wish to offer my heartfelt thanks to all of you who sent messages of support through Labourstart to the London Busworkers who achieved a great victory in the Olympic solidarity campaign. I am convinced that if there was a gold medal for solidarity you would all be recipients. Thanks also to the International Transport Workers’ Federation, ITF, for their unstinting support and efforts during this campaign.”

The ITF’s own statement issued last week is here.

Second, today we broke through a major barrier and now have 100,223 names on our mailing lists. Wow.

Written by admin in: Campaigns,Mailing list |
Jul
23
2012
3

New campaign launched – UK only

We launched a new campaign on Saturday for the UK only, and in English only, in support of cleaners employed by London Transport. A very similar campaign, in support of London bus drivers, ended in victory last week and we’ll be closing this down tomorrow.

I’ve also tweaked the software so that on a UK-only campaign, the default country is now “United Kingdom”. I’ll make similar changes next time we have a Canada-only campaign or something similar.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Jul
11
2012
2

Our first campaign to top 2,000 messages in languages other than English?

Over time, more and more of the messages being sent out in support of our campaigns are coming in languages other than English. In our current campaigns, it can be as much as a third of all messages sent. Even if the English messages still outnumber the non-English ones by two-to-one, it’s still significant. There are global unions which campaign in one, or perhaps two or three languages, not necessarily realizing the potential.

If you look at our live review of campaigns broken down by languages, you can see the most recent one (Turkey: Free jailed trade unionists now) has had 5,883 messages sent and of those, 1,865 come from non-English versions of the campaign. The biggest ones are actually quite substantial, with 650 in Turkish and well over 500 in French. I’m going to do a bit of a push now to get additional translations and mailings out. If we can pick up another 135 non-English messages, this will be the first time we’ve ever broken the 2,000 barrier for a campaign.

Written by admin in: Campaigns,Internationalization |
Jul
10
2012
0

Weekly update for 3-10 July

Note: There will be no update next week as I will be on holiday.

Campaigns: Several improvements noted below, including the ability to see all active campaigns on one page, broken down by language. We’re also now showing campaign news in English as well as the campaign’s own language on each campaign page. And the pass-it-on code for campaigns is now working again. We’ve also made it impossible for Google to find and show the list of email addresses of campaign supporters — something that was happening on our new server due to the unusual configuration of Apache there (this was not the case on our old server).

Fundraising: We’ve hired a graphic designer — having talked to 9 different individuals and companies, who all made proposals — to produce a small brochure which we can use to explain to unions what LabourStart does for them and encourage them to make donations. We’ll let you know when copies are available. We’re still waiting to get addresses of US unions.

Labour films: We noticed that the links to the online labour films database and the list of labour film festivals – maintained by the Washington DC Metro Labor Council and co-sponsored by LabourStart – had stopped working and were removed. We’ve now gotten the new details and will be putting up new links.

Written by admin in: Campaigns,Fund-raising,Security |
Jul
04
2012
1

Finally, a clear view of our campaigns

I’ve been working on a script for some time now – and just this morning completed it – to allow us to do two things we could never do before.  The results, I think, are pretty interesting.

Here’s what I wanted to achieve:

  • To see all our campaigns on one page, and how big each one is.
  • For each campaign, to see a clear breakdown of support by language.

You can see this by clicking here.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |

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