Inside LabourStart

Another very busy week:

Campaigns:

New campaign launched in support of PKC workers in Mexico, together with IndustriALL. Two days after launch, the campaign had over 6,300 supporters — including nearly 140 for the Finnish edition. As a result, and including some earlier efforts, we now have probably over 500 Finnish email addresses.

The UK-only RMT campaign has grown from 2,600 a week ago to over 3,200 today — by far our biggest ever campaign that was only publicized in a single country, and proof of what can happen when we team up with a local union that knows how to mobilize its members.

The Korea campaign continues to grow, but not as quickly as we’d like. It’s now up to 10,250 — and needs more than 1,000 more supporters if it were to be our largest current campaign. We wrote to every PSI affiliate last week about this campaign.

Our comrades in the Philippines have now made an effort to boost support for their month-old campaign, and the result is 22 supporters in Tagalog — our first campaign ever in that language. They’ve sent us the text for a Spanish version as well, which should go live very soon.

Upcoming campaigns: We’re still waiting on a final text from Australia on a campaign to support Bob Carnegie.

Czech campaigns: Four out of six people on our list responded favorably to my request for assistance, so expect to soon see campaigns in Czech, and an active email list (we already have 65 addresses).

Esperanto campaigns: I’ve written to our small list to see if there’s any interest in doing campaigns (and reviving our news page) in this language.

Book sales: Last week I reported that we’d sold just under 500 copies in 5 weeks; today I can report that we sold a total of 543. Book sales following a campaign launch remain high – we sold 4 copies yesterday and 10 copies the day before that.  I’ve had to order another 100 copies from the publisher, as I expect to sell some at upcoming trade union events we’ve been invited to in Oxford, Bournemouth and Swansea.

UCS book: In the hands of the publisher; we should have some news on this within a few days.

Articles: I had my first articles on the British TUC’s Stronger Unions blog and the ITUC’s Equal Times website.

Fundraising: February has, so far, been a good month. We’ve taken in £4,549 so far (not all of that donations to LabourStart — some is paid work that I did). If that continues (unlikely, but we can hope), it may be our best month ever.

London fundraiser: We’ve begun serious discussion with friendly entertainers about doing a London fundraising event. More details soon.