Oct
29
2015
1

Report on the LabourStart Retreat in Brussels last month

This report was drafted by Martina and edited by Eric. Comments are open — please feel free to make comments and ask questions below.

The LabourStart Retreat had the character of a working meeting. Presentations by Dan Gallin, Martina Hartung, Eric Lee and Gisela Neunhoeffer prepared the basis for discussions and we worked concretely on specific subjects in working groups or in a World Café format. This mix of presentation and discussion enabled the successful integration of all participants on all subjects and the result wasa detailed and concrete future action plan. Unfortunately, one speaker had to cancel due to illness in the short term. Besides that, there weren’t any further changes to the program. (more…)

Written by admin in: 2015 Retreat |
Oct
26
2015
--

Campaigns supporting workers in Estonia, Turkey, India, Yemen, Israel, etc.

Most of the work in the last 13 days has focussed on campaigns:

  • We launched a new campaign at the request of the ITF, in support of workers in Estonia.
  • We’re keeping our Turkey/Mulberry campaign live at the moment at the request of IndustriALL pending some developments there.
  • I wrote to Sharan Burrow at the ITUC offering our help in growing the joint campaign with the ILO “50 for Freedom”. She replied and is happy to have our help.
  • We gave extensive publicity to the IUF’s new PepsiCo campaign on our home page, to our mailing lists, and on social media.
  • We received a campaign request from WAC Ma’an in Israel; this is on hold pending developments in the region and we also await a reply from the Histadrut.
  • We gave publicity to an IFJ campaign in support of kidnapped media workers in Yemen on social media.
  • I completed work on the new Translations Dashboard which is being used by our volunteer translators. It shows who is translating our campaigns, and prevents duplication of effort.

In other news … (more…)

Oct
13
2015
0

Massacre in Ankara, and more

In the last 3 weeks …

Massacre in Ankara:

Upon hearing the news on Saturday morning from our comrades in DISK, we mobilized correspondents to post many news stories, to translate some of them from English, and to encourage global unions to issue statements, many of which have done so. (more…)

Written by admin in: Campaigns,Publicity,Twitter,UnionBook |
Oct
10
2015
4

Thunderclap Results (or lack thereof)

by Derek Blackadder

The following is a section of my regular column (Webwork) in the Canadian labour magazine Our Times. Eric thought it might be of interest and so…

ON HIS WAY TO THE EDUCATION International World Congress in Ottawa in July, Iranian teachers’ union leader Esmail Abdi was arrested by the Iranian police; detained without charge; likely tortured; and almost certainly thinking about the fate of his predecessor, Farzad Kamangar, who was executed after a trial lasting seven minutes. (more…)

Written by derek in: Campaigns,Uncategorized | Tags:
Oct
08
2015
3

Berlin conference on transnational campaigning by unions

I’ve just returned from a three-day visit to Berlin, where I was invited to represent LabourStart (together with Gisela) at a conference on transnational campaigning for trade unions organized by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES).

bwiberlinOn the final day of the conference, the FES sponsored an event to commemorate the World Day for Decent Work, focussing on the various campaigns conducted by the ITUC and global unions on mega sport events, like the football World Cup and the Olympics.  Tos Anonuevo from BWI, the global union for construction workers, gave a major presentation, and one of his slides (pictured to the left) entitled “Generating support, creating alliances” featured LabourStart right in the center.

We were not in the center of the conference, however, but that didn’t mean that LabourStart didn’t come up again and again.  For example: (more…)

Written by admin in: Campaigns |

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