Dec
15
2016
0

One of our fastest campaign victories

Derek Blackadder writes: “In December of 2016 the government of the Canadian Province of Nova Scotia gave two days’ notice of its intention to bar tens of thousands of students from its schools in an effort to put pressure on the teachers union.  It also gave notice of the introduction of a bill to legislate larger class sizes and longer hours of work on the teachers, drastically affecting the quality of education.  In co-operation with the Nova scotia Teachers Union and the Canadian Teachers Federation a LabourStart campaign was assembled and in less than 2 hours almost 1,000 Canadians sent protest messages to the province’s Premier.  In combination with the NSTU’s meatspace actions the campaign was an important consideration in the government’s decision to open the schools after one day and to re-consider over-riding the teachers’ collective agreement.”

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Dec
14
2016
1

“Whatever it takes. Whatever you need. We are with you.”

Deliveroo worker and union leader – victimised for helping to organise workers.

Last night, the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) had a public meeting in central London with Deliveroo workers and other couriers.  

LabourStart co-sponsored the well-attended meeting, and editor Eric Lee was one of the speakers.  

Here is what he said:

My name is Eric Lee and I am the editor of the LabourStart website.

LabourStart is the news and campaigning website of the international trade union movement.

We do a lot of online campaigns in support of trade union rights around the world. Those campaigns are brought to us by our partners in the international trade union movement, including the global union federations, the International Trade Union Confederation, and national and local unions in many countries.

Over 135,000 trade unionists are part of our network who are mobilised when needed to support workers who are fighting for their basic human rights, for the right to join and form trade unions.

Right now, we are running campaigns at the request of unions in support of jailed trade unionists in Iran, Egypt, South Korea and Turkey; we are fighting against attempts to outlaw independent trade unions in Kazakhstan and demanding the rehiring of sacked trade union leaders in Liberia.

The fight for the right to join and form trade unions is a massive, world-wide fight. In many countries, workers do not have the possibility to join and form trade unions.

This is the case even though all workers, in all countries, have the legal right to unions because all countries are bound by the conventions of the International Labor Organisation, a United Nations body. Those conventions specifically give workers the rights to trade unions and every government in the world is obligated to uphold those rights.

Today many unions in many different countries are engaged in a fight against precarious work, and in support of regularised employment for workers. We have supported workers on this issue on many occasions, in different countries.

The struggle of Deliveroo workers here in London combines both of these issues — the right to have a trade union, and the fight against precarious work.

The so-called “gig economy” is a new way of describing an exploitative system where workers have no rights.

Where workers are poorly paid.

Where things like sick days and holidays do not exist.

Where workers can be sacked on a whim by their employer.

Where workers are treated with disrespect by their bosses.

We thought that here in the UK, we had moved beyond this. We have a proud history of trade unionism, have millions of members in powerful unions, and have won many victories over the decades.

But all that is under threat today. Even though we’re not in the situation faced by workers in Iran, where workers cannot join or form independent unions, or Turkey or South Korea where unions are struggling with repressive, anti-worker governments, we are also not where we want to be.

Trade unions in the UK have faced a historic decline, over many years.

They are a fraction of their former size. They wield much less power and influence than they did in the past. They struggle to organise new members, especially in the “gig economy”.

This is why the struggle at Deliveroo here in London is so important.

The workers at Deliveroo are not going to get decent pay, better working conditions, job security or respect at work just by asking for it.

They won’t get it with online petitions or sympathetic articles appearing in the Guardian.

They’ll win those things only when they have a powerful trade union in their workplace.

That is why I support the work being done here by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain.

You have taken on the difficult task of helping to bring a trade union to Deliveroo.

I am confident that you will win, and that Deliveroo workers will someday soon enjoy the benefits of a collective bargaining agreement.

Until that happens, we at LabourStart, and I’m sure many other trade unionists, are ready to do all that we can help — by spreading the word, by supporting meetings like this one, by helping to raise money.

Whatever it takes. Whatever you need. We are with you.

Solidarity forever!

Written by admin in: Uncategorized |
Dec
09
2016
2

We publish our first book since 2014 – and it’s a great one

We’re reviving our publications programme with four new books in the pipeline, and that will just take us through the winter.  This is an ambitious plan and we’re starting off with a great one, with huge potential interest from the labour movement and others.

The first book of this new season is The Strangers Among Us: Tales from a Global Migrant Workers Movement, edited by Joseph B. Atkins.  This 136 page book offers readers compelling insight from 10 writers around the world (including LabourStart’s Eric Lee) about migrant workers’ rising consciousness of their rights and ability to assert those rights in a global economy that seems to place all power in the hands of mega-corporations. From tobacco workers in North Carolina to Vietnamese domestic workers in Taiwan and the network of organizations that support them, a movement is emerging that will pose a growing challenge to neoliberal rule.  The book costs just $9.99 and is available from Amazon and most bookshops.

Order your copies here: http://www.labourstart.org/go/strangers  And please – post reviews of the book on Amazon and elsewhere.

Spread the word!

Written by admin in: Publications |
Dec
02
2016
1

LabourStart in Numbers – June – December 2016

Some highlights:

* Note that this report covers a six month period as we missed our September report.
* Good news on traffic to the website – very big gains in traffic to both the news and campaigns sites. Over 61,000 unique visitors to news site was a gain of nearly 50% compared to the first half of the year.There was an even bigger gain for the campaigns site.
* There’s been a very significant growth in interest in our news site in India.
* While most of the mailing lists either stayed the same size or shrunk, the Portuguese language list stands out for having grown by 36% in the last half year. Also our Brasilian presence on Facebook has shown enormous growth.
* Once again, the Canadian Twitter feeds in English and French have grown dramatically, while the USA Twitter following remains quite small.
* Of the five top campaigns in this half year, two came from the International Federation of Journalists (our first campaigns ever with the IFJ) and three of the five are currently active campaigns.

Mailing lists

English: 86,697 – 88,242
French: 8,929 – 8,791
German: 5,997 – 6,021
Spanish: 5,525 – 5,531
Turkish: 4,314 – 4,268
Korean: 4,170 – 3,965
Italian: 4,021 – 4,044
Norwegian: 2,681 – 2,701
Russian: 2,444 – 2,449
Dutch: 1,720 – 1,774

Swedish: 1,242 – 1,235
Chinese: 1,112 – 1,112
Polish: 798 – 798
Portuguese: 647 – 475
Finnish: 638 – 687
Japanese: 518 – 518
Arabic: 418 – 478
Indonesian: 346 – 346
Hebrew: 284 – 296
Tagalog: 254 – 254
Farsi: 231 – 242

UnionBook

UnionBook was closed in 2016.

Linked In

LabourStart group: 2,044 – 2,012

Flickr

Union group on Flickr: 821 – 806

Website

Correspondents: 845 – 826

LabourStart.org (news)

Unique users – 61,279 – 41,506

Top countries (by sessions):

USA 23% – 23%
Canada 14% – 15%
UK 13% – 12%
India – 6%
Australia 5% – 5%

Most popular pages – page views:

Home page – English 51,618 – 34,337
USA – English 21,045 – 8,294
Canada – English 10,210 – 6,297
India – 11,069 – 1,807
Home page – Norwegian 4,091 – 2,746

LabourStartCampaigns.net (campaigns)

Unique users – 56,270 – 37,851

Top countries (by sessions):

UK 15% – 16%
USA 13% – 14%
Canada 9% – 10%
Germany 5% – 7%
Belgium 5%

Most popular pages – page views:

South Korea: Release jailed trade unionists, respect workers’ rights – 8,969
Iran: Freedom for teacher union leader Esmail Abdi – 8,940
Korea: Don’t let Han’s death be in vain – 8,659
Turkey: Press freedom is essential for democracy, set journalism free! – 8,651
AFP: Demand fair terms for freelance photographers – 8,153

Twitter

English: 16,922 – 16,188
Canada English: 6,404 – 5,661
Canada French: 1,633 – 1,071
USA: 639 – 608
Italian: 475 – 458
Indonesia: 365 – 368
Swedish: 374 – 356
French: 230 – 225
Portuguese: 191 – 92
German: 92 – 91
Spanish: 71 – 73
Japanese: 21 – 22
Russian: 18 – 18

Facebook

Like LabourStart.org page (English): 11,990 – 10,528
Members of LabourStart group: 8,388 – 8,521
Friends of LabourStart Brasil: 3,232 – 1,681
Like LabourStart page (French): 551 – 535
Like LabourStart page (German): 478 – 472
Like LabourStart page (Turkish): 177 – 175
Like LabourStart page (Hebrew): 155 – 155
Members of LabourStart Vostok (Russian): 89 – 109

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