Inside LabourStart

LabourStart only recently launched a Facebook Page –

http://www.facebook.com/labourstart.org

The page went live 18 days ago.

This comes after having had a Facebook Group for several years.

Pages have certain advantages – and they seem to go viral faster because updates appear on your own news feeds.

We were admittedly quite late to discover this and I’ve decided have a look around and see how many fans the various union Facebook pages currently have and when they were last updated.

Here’s a selection from the global unions (including the date last updated) — these are the ones with active Facebook pages:

1. UNI Global Union – 2,298 – 17 April
2. PSI – 1,903 – 18 April
3. International Trade Union Confederation – 1,640 – 16 April
4. LabourStart – 787 – 16 April
5. IUF – 662 – 16 April
6. IMF – 306 – 15 April

And these are the inactive ones:

1. ICEM – 209 – 4 March
2. IFJ – 90 – never updated
3. BWI – 27 – 12 April
4. Education International – 30 – 14 April
5. ITGLWF – no page
6. ITF – no page

As for national trade union centers in the English-speaking world, here’s a selection:

1. USA: AFL-CIO 25,182
2. UK: TUC 1,821
3. USA: Change to Win 1,412
4. Ireland: Irish Congress of Trade Unions 1,333
5. Canada: CLC 491
6. South Africa: COSATU 84
7. Australia: ACTU 32
8. New Zealand: CTU 31 [see comments below for more details]