Sep
30
2016
0

LabourStart joins forces with Italian labour radio station

cgilRadioArticolo1 is an online radio station of the Italian national trade union centre CGIL.  According to the Wikipedia article, CGIL with its 5.5 million members is “the biggest trade union in Europe“.  That’s debatable, but it’s certainly one of the important ones, and one we’ve worked with before on campaigns, especially with their metal workers union.

Thanks to the efforts of our comrades Silvana and Andrea, RadioArticolo1 is keen to have a regular LabourStart program, and they’re starting with an interview with me.  Once it goes live, I’ll share the link — the program will be in Italian — and let’s hope this strengthens our work in Italy and our relationship with CGIL and the Italian labour movement.

Written by admin in: Uncategorized |
Sep
28
2016
0

Coming soon: A LabourStart intern

Applications are now closed for the paid LabourStart internship this year.  Three of us went through the 12 applicants who applied, and brought this down to a shortlist of just 4 names — and this wasn’t easy as there were several very good candidates.  Interviews will take place in London next week and I’ll report back here once we’ve made a decision on who to hire.  I want to thank Derek and Silvana for helping to sort through the candidates, and Roger Darlington for agreeing to help me with the actual interviews, as before.

Written by admin in: Intern |
Sep
26
2016
0

Our first new campaign in nearly two months

At the request of the Cairo-based Center for Trade Union and Worker Services (CTUWS), we’ve just launched a campaign in support of jailed shipyard workers in Alexandria.  Let’s spread the word far and wide today and make this first campaign of a new season a very big one.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Sep
19
2016
1

Campaign drought?

At the moment, LabourStart is running just 4 campaigns — and we’ve not launched a new one for a month and a half.

Today we closed down the WIPO campaign (see here to see how that turned out) and our Avon campaign from Turkey (we’ve not yet heard back from the union.

The four current campaigns are not blockbusters, having been launched during the quieter summer months (in the northern hemisphere).  Here are the current totals:

campaigns190916

If you know unions that could use our help with a campaign, this might be a good time to suggest it.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Sep
16
2016
0

WIPO: How our campaign helped

Brett Fitzgerald from the Federation of International Civil Servants’ Associations (FICSA), wrote to us yesterday:

On behalf of the Presidents of FICSA and the WIPO Staff Association, please accept their sincere gratitude for having run this LabourStart campaign.

As you will see from reading the statement delivered by US Ambassador Pamela Hamamota, on behalf of a group of WIPO Member States, at the Extraordinary Session of the WIPO Coordination Committee (of Member States) held on 12 September 2016, this LabourStart campaign helped to contribute to the call from a group of WIPO Member States for the release of the report of the investigation conducted by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) concerning allegations against the WIPO Director General.

FICSA has learned that the WIPO Coordination Committee (of Member States) decided at Monday’s meeting that the OIOS investigation report must be released by no later than 26 September 2016 so that WIPO Member States can have time to read the full report in preparation for the annual Assemblies of WIPO Member States which will begin on 3 October 2016.

Ambassador Hamamota’s statement delivered on behalf of a group of WIPO Member States is available at the following link: https://geneva.usmission.gov/2016/09/13/joint-statement/

 

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Sep
14
2016
0

UnionBook is no more

unionbookI have completed downloading as much of the content as I can, have written to all members of UnionBook, have instructed Ning that we do not wish to renew for $1,200, and have prepared a landing page for people going to UnionBook.org (which isn’t yet working for some reason).

UnionBook, launched in its current form in December 2008, is no more.

Written by admin in: UnionBook |
Sep
08
2016
5

UnionBook – the end?

Yesterday I posted this message on the UnionBook website and sent a very similar message to all 5,943 users by email:

The company which hosts this service has just DOUBLED their prices, effective immediately.  

This means that LabourStart now needs to pay nearly $1,200 a year for a service which was costing us $600 a year until now.

Because of this, and because there appear to be very few active users of UnionBook, we are thinking of closing down the service.  

If you or your union or organization are prepared to donate $1,200, we can continue for another year.

Alternately, if we see a sudden huge show of interest in the site, we will reconsider.  (That doesn’t mean five people like it — it means enough people to justify spending that kind of money.)

I apologize for the short notice, but we just heard this and have only days to decide.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

– Eric Lee, LabourStart

Written by admin in: UnionBook |

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