Inside LabourStart

Bangladesh: We shared the story about the garment strikers being sacked widely on a social media, and as a top global news story.

Brazil: We shared the BWI/IndustriALL statement on Vale and the dam disaster on social media and as a top global news story.

Canada: We did a mailing to our Canadian supporters in support of the UFCW.

Germany: We shared widely on social media and as a top global news story the Education International story about a joint German/Polish/Israeli teachers’ event to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

Guatemala: We launched a new campaign at the request of PSI.

Iran: At the request of Amnesty International, we shared their campaign as a top global labour news story, and across social media. Earlier, we publicised the re-arrest of Iranian trade unionist Esmail Bakhshi at the request of one of our correspondents in New Zealand.

Korea: We launched a new campaign at the request of PSI.

Philippines: At the request of the Education International, we launched a campaign. It is now live in 15 languages.

South Africa: We shared a COSATU general strike story widely on social media.

Sudan: We publicised a story about Sudanese protests – led by the doctors’ union – as a top global news story and across social media.

Thailand: Noting the low participation rates for the Thai language version of the campaign, we wrote to the ITF and they have contacted the local union to ensure broader support.

Tunisia: We shared our coverage of the general strike widely on social media.

UK: We added a new correspondent.

USA: We shared the Labor Notes story about victory in LA teachers’ strike across social media, and as a top global news story.

Labour Photo of the Year: We began discussing the possibility of reviving this competition.

Mailing lists: We added 211 campaign supporters to our lists.

Coding issues: There was a fairly long to-do list here, but we’ve managed to cross a few of the items off the list.
We managed to fix the repeating text in the left column of country news pages in French — this was a particular problem for the Canadian news page.
We also fixed a problem with the display of labour history items in French on the Canada page.
We fixed our news page to ensure that when clicking on a state or province, you are taken to the new page and the correct language (this was previously hard-coded to English).
We fixed it so that all countries that have directories named after them now point to the correct pages, e.g., www.labourstart.org/cuba.
We fixed the display of country names in the centre column on the Spanish page.
We changed the campaign page to offer a radio button with yes/no options for joining the mailing list. Some campaigning organisations, including Britain’s TUC, have found that this increases the number of people who opt-in to mailing lists.
We fixed the problem which would arise when people adding commas to their names when supporting our campaigns; this breaks the syntax for sending emails, and has lead to some bounces recently.