Inside LabourStart

News: In the first 15 days of May, our volunteer correspondents posted 1,499 news stories — almost exactly 100 per day. Thanks to our 12 most productive correspondents this month – Derek, Eric, Patrick, Pat, Espen, Francisco, Kyle, Mick, Ivan, Silvana, Roy and Warren.

Interns: We selected 3 interns from the 14 who applied from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. They will begin work at the end of August, one of them on a full-time basis and the other two part-time.

Campaigns: We received updates from our union partners on two of the four current campaigns, which we will share. A third has been promised to us. Meanwhile, we received an update to a Ryanair campaign we launched back in 2020.

International Union Rights: We did a mailing to promote subscriptions to this important journal and sold a number. Details are here.

Canada: Pat Bulmer interviewed the head of the Alberta Federation of Labour, Gil McGowan. It’s a long but interesting podcast. Listen here.

Italy: At the request of comrades from the Italian unions, we sent out a long and detailed message to our Italian list about a union-backed referendum taking place in early June.

Saudi Arabia: We participated in an online event launching two reports on dangers facing migrant workers in the run-up to the 2034 FIFA World Cup. We gave extensive publicity to the reports and reached out to BWI about a possible campaign; we have a call scheduled for next week.

USA: We have a call scheduled for today with the Solidarity Center – we offered to help in any way we can as Trump’s cuts have had a disastrous impact on their important work in many countries.

Interns: We have now completed interviewing all 6 candidate interns from the Cornell ILR school; we will select 2 of them for fall internships next week.  Thanks to Penny and Derek for helping to interview all the candidates.

Campaigns: We reached out to our partners on the 4 active campaigns asking for updates that we can share. We’ve gotten two positive responses so far. This is important and we don’t always do this.

Problem with reaching LabourStart from Google in the USA: Two intern candidates pointed this out, possibly after searching Google for “LaborStart”. We think we identified the problem and have fixed it, but if anyone still has difficulty, please let us know.

Mailing lists: Our lists grew by 44 this week, with the largest number for the Azerbaijani list. But most of those are people already on our Turkish list, so we probably shouldn’t have them on both lists.

Canada: We had a good meeting with the International Solidarity committee of the BCGEU.  Thanks to Derek and Pat for playing an active part in this.

USA: We reached out to the UFW offering help with a campaign, but have not yet heard back. The Solidarity Center did get back to us with a response to our offer to help them.

This week we were able to focus on two major events on the labour calendar around the world: International Workers’ Memorial Day and May Day. Our coverage of both events was exemplary, with hundreds of stories posted.

In the run up to May Day, Eric was invited to be on a panel with Iranian emigre activists focussing on workers’ struggles in the Islamic Republic. Here is what he said.

We created a shortlist of six students from Cornell University who have applied to be interns this coming fall. We will interview them all next week. Thanks to Derek, Penny and Isabel for helping to review all the applicant submissions.

And a special thanks to Isabel who has now completed her second internship with LabourStart.

Our mailing lists continue to grow, picking up 159 new subscribers this week — mostly for the English list.

And finally, we signed up one new correspondent from the USA and have just received an application from another one, in Nigeria.