Oct
28
2016
0

Nominations for the 2017 Arthur Svensson Prize are now open

As you may remember, LabourStart was awarded the 2016 Arthur Svensson international prize for trade union rights.  The organizers are inviting nominations for next year’s prize — full details are here.  Please note that only “representatives and employees of trade unions throughout the world can nominate candidates for the prize.”

Written by admin in: Uncategorized |
Oct
24
2016
5

Meet our new interns

Meet John and Eda.

Meet John and Eda.

LabourStart has hired two new interns.  I asked them to say a few words about themselves.

Edanur Yazici:

“I’m very excited to be joining the LabourStart team. I have been an active member of a small union, the IWW for some time and I am currently serving as a local branch officer. I look forward to be able to put the skills I have gained there to good use at LabourStart. My academic background is in Politics and I have a fair bit of experience in various grassroots campaigning organisations and movements.”

John Millington:

“I am proud to be working with LabourStart. I am a former national newspaper journalist, health campaigner and currently a union activist. I am looking forward to using my skills and seven years experience to promote workers’ rights throughout the world.”

Written by admin in: Intern,Uncategorized |
Oct
18
2016
0

Our second campaign with the IFJ – and it’s a big one

Journalism is not a crime!

Journalism is not a crime!

We just went live with this – a campaign that should be a very large one, demanding the release of 90 imprisoned journalists in Turkey, and an end to attacks on press freedom in that country.

Please do what you can to translate, promote and build this campaign.

It’s very important.

Thanks.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Oct
14
2016
1

Talking with Belgian transport workers – and looking back at an old campaign

ABVV/BTBToday I’m in Mechelen, a town in between Brussels and Antwerp, where I was invited to speak with a group of about 35 members of the Belgian transport workers union BTB/ABVV.

Two years we ran a campaign with them against “social dumping” by IKEA, which was replacing unionised Belgian truck drivers with workers from Eastern Europe at much lower wages and with no social protections.

I get to speak to trade unions quite a bit about online campaigns, but in this case I was able to speak a bit about that campaign which we did, how it turned out, and what we can do together in the future.  I thought this part of my talk may be of interest to you:

The campaign was one of our larger ones, attracting 10,672 supporters.

It ran in 15 languages – translated by volunteers at LabourStart. Of course it ran in all the usual European languages including English, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

But it also ran in Norwegian, Czech, Hungarian, Russian, Slovenian and Ukrainian. And because workers outside Europe should also oppose social dumping, it ran in Indonesian and Hebrew too. It was even translated into Esperanto, the international auxiliary language.

It got support from all over Europe and all over the world – 1,456 people in Britain, where I live, supported it. 1,332 Americans signed up. It got over 1,000 Canadians and over 500 Australians too. The English version of the campaign got the support of 320 people in Belgium and another 309 in the Netherlands.

Nearly 550 people supported the Dutch version of the campaign and well over 1,000 supported the French version.

These are good numbers, but they also show that within the Belgian and Dutch labour movements, awareness of the campaign was quite small. The campaign had more support from Canadian workers than it did from Belgian workers.

And that is what we have to change.

We now have tools to mobilise the tens of millions of people in the international trade union movement, but we must first learn to mobilise our own members.

Next time, we must do better.

What was the result of this campaign?

We have not yet won. There have been ongoing negotiations with IKEA, involving BTB, the FNV and a Swedish trade union working together. A meeting took place in September with IKEA’s world-wide HR person. Unions continue to tell IKEA to either work with us to stop social dumping, or we will bring this to the attention of the media.

The struggle continues. Maybe we will have to do another campaign.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Oct
10
2016
0

Major new campaign on Korea

hansangyuThis was launched today with the support of the ITUC and most of the GUFs.

It’s not our first campaign about Korea, but it’s an important one and I hope everyone reading this will make a special effort to mobilize support in your union and your country.

Thanks.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Oct
06
2016
0

From campaign drought to campaign flood

flood-vs-droughtCampaigns seem to be seasonal affairs; there are months when we have almost none, and other times when we need to launch several campaigns at almost the same time (which is a pretty bad idea).

Today we’re in the process of launching two major campaigns — one in support of health care workers in Liberia whose leaders languish in jail; the other in support of the jailed leadership of the South Korean labour movement.  Both campaigns are supported by a wide range of powerful international trade union bodies and, I hope, will gather lots of support.

In addition, we’re expecting a major campaign in support of Turkish journalists — so three new campaigns, probably all being launched this week.

This places an exceptional burden on our volunteer translators and I’m doing what I can to space the campaigns apart, and to encourage our partners to supply us with very short texts — with only limited success.

Meanwhile, our latest campaign (in support of Egyptian shipyard workers) is doing quite well, coming up on 7,500 supporters. I’m hoping that at least one of the three campaigns we’re about to launch can break the 10,000 barrier — but this depends in large part on how much our partner unions help us to promote it.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Oct
04
2016
0

Why our newest campaign is also our largest current campaign

Some campaigns just take off.  Our campaign in support of the shipyard workers in Alexandria, Egypt is one of these.  After just one week online, it’s already almost (and by the time you read this, it will be) our largest current campaign, rapidly nearing 6,000 supporters.  Why is this the case?

Actually, there’s no mystery here: the main difference between this campaign and the campaigns in support of teachers in Ecuador or photographers at AFP is that this campaign appears in German.  We have a number of languages, German among them, for which we have substantial mailing lists, but where not all our campaigns get translated.  For example, we have 5,700 people on our Korean and Dutch mailing lists — but our campaigns are rarely translated into those languages.

There was a time when the only list that mattered was the English one, but that is no longer the case.  30% of the supporters of the current Egyptian campaign are doing so in languages other than English.  Of the three most recent campaigns, this is the highest percentage of non-English supporters, and it will probably grow when we launch the Spanish version later today.

So it’s becoming increasingly clear that for our campaigns to be much larger, we need to translate them into more and more languages, and in particular German, Korean and Dutch.  And those lists need to continue to grow.  Something to keep in mind.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |

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