Inside LabourStart

As 2020 draws to an end, I wanted to pause for a moment and review some of the things we were able to accomplish under the most difficult circumstances during this terrible year.

According to our statistics, our volunteer correspondents around the world posted 56,040 news stories to our site this year.  That’s an average of 154 news stories every day of the year.

A new labour news story every 9 minutes.

When I look at the mainstream media news sites, I barely see a hint of all this news.  Working people and our unions rarely make headlines.

Even some union websites feature hardly any updated news.  Some major union websites go weeks without a single update.

But not LabourStart.

If you don’t glance at our site for a week, you’ve missed 1,000 news stories.

In addition to our news, this year we ran 24 campaigns in support of workers and their unions.

Those campaigns focussed on struggles in Belarus, Brazil, Cambodia, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Germany, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Peru, Turkey, Ukraine and Zimbabwe.

Some of these campaigns resulted in victories for the workers.

We’ve helped get trade unionists released from jail, companies to sit down and negotiate with workers’ representatives, and workers reinstated after being wrongfully sacked.

Thanks to the efforts of our volunteer translators, these campaigns often appear in many languages — and as a result are much larger and more effective than campaigns that appear only in English or a handful of major languages.

We are strong believers in linguistic diversity and equality, and we believe that workers everywhere should be encouraged to participate in global solidarity campaigns, regardless of what language they speak.

And finally, we were able to coordinate — for the first time — a virtual May Day event that spanned the globe.

This online event exceeded all our expectations.  We were able to show nearly 200 videos over the course of 11 hours.  Those videos varied in quality, as we expected, but many were outstanding and we shared these after May Day on our website and across social media.

Our audience came from all over the world and the feedback in the comments on Facebook was exceptionally positive.  Many trade unionists saw this as a unique opportunity to make contact with friends they don’t normally get the chance to see, and to greet one another over huge distances.

Over 100,000 trade unionists participated in the event online.

Looking back at 2020, it was a terrible year for everyone, and especially for working people.

But unions rose to meet the challenge by organising, fighting and resisting.

And LabourStart has been there to help.

Next year can only be better and we hope to fill our website with stories of working people winning the fight for social justice, strengthening our unions, and building back better.

I wish you and your families a happy New Year.

Solidarity forever!

Eric Lee

P.S. Please share this message with your friends, family and fellow union members.