Inside LabourStart

Well, it’s been two weeks, actually. And there’s a lot to report, so here goes:

Recruiting new correspondents: This is a priority for us and we’re going to tackle it one country at a time. This week we wrote to our 459 email subscribers in South Africa asking them to check out our news page and to apply to be correspondents.

Turkey campaign: This has been growing, now with 4,510 supporters. The campaign appears in 21 languages, which is a lot for us. Among these is Urdu, for the very first time, I think. We also picked up over 100 new subscribers to our mailing list from Turkey in a recent update.

Thailand campaign: Yesterday this was our smallest current campaign, with just 3,842 supporters. But a follow-up mailing to the English list meant we picked up over 700 new supporters and are now up to 4,563 — surpassing the Turkey campaign. This campaign now appears in 14 languages, with more on the way.

Social media: Our home page now features links to all five of our active social media accounts, including the newest – Bluesky, and we’ve dropped links our inactive Instagram and Mastodon accounts.

Donations: We are waiting on one pledged donation and we are hoping for one more that we applied for. In early January, we will have to chase after major union donors and individuals if we are to stay secure for the next few months.

Germany: The teachers’ union GEW asked us to design a postcard (colour, two-sided) which we did and got the short text translated into German. They will be printing this out and distributing it to everyone attending the union’s conference next month. GEW already made a generous donation to us in 2023.