Inside LabourStart

Podcasts: This week we interviewed Esther Lynch, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation — that interview will go live next week. We released the interview we did with Myanmar trade union leader Khaing Zar and in its first day online, it soared to 139 downloads, well on its way to being one of our most popular podcasts.

Kenya campaign: The Kenya campaign, launched at the request of PSI, picked up more than 1,000 new supporters in the last week, and appears in 15 languages — a gain of 8 languages this week. The union has suspended the strike but we’ve been asked to keep the campaign live for a while longer.

Panama campaign: We closed this campaign after more than four months online — it had 5,282 supporters and appeared in 12 languages.

News: In the first 9 days of May, our volunteer correspondents posted 1,082 news stories, or 120 on average every day.

Campaigns: We launched a new campaign in support of striking health care workers in Kenya.  It currently appears in 7 languages and has 1,338 supporters.

Podcasts: This week we interviewed a leader of the independent trade union movement in Myanmar — which will go live next week.  We released an interview with Jan Willem Goudriaan, general secretary of EPSU.

Iran: The workers’ rights NGO ‘Free Them Now’ released a video of LabourStart’s Eric Lee calling on the ILO to refuse to seat the Iranian ‘worker delegates’ at the International Labour Conference next month.

Egypt: We also prepared a video for the CTUWS at their request demanding on May Day the release of the jailed worker activists from Mahalla textiles.  It does not yet appear to be live on the net.

This blog: After about 8 months of silence, we resumed updating this blog, with several catch-up posts this week.

LabourStart has been lucky to have had some outstanding interns over the last decade or more, and for the last few months — starting in September 2023, we have had four exceptionally talented young people working with us.

David came to us through the Global Labour University (GLU); he is a labour lawyer from Colombia and was very helpful with many projects, including an upcoming campaign in the city of Medellin.

We had three interns from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) — Isabel, Erin and Salomée.  They all did excellent work on a number of projects as well as helping us with translations into Korean and French.

We will continue to work with GLU and the ILR school, as well as others, to help introduce a new generation of activists to the international trade union movement.

It’s May Day and we’d like to take this opportunity to express our solidarity with workers everywhere who are fighting for their rights, for equality, social justice and peace.

LabourStart today will be filled with news links from all around the world and we thank our volunteer correspondents for making that happen.

This year, we were approached by worker activists from Iran and Egypt, asking us for May Day video messages.

• The message for the Iranian group ‘Free Them Now’ is now online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2SW_sXC_Gw
• We are still waiting for the CTUWS in Egypt to send us the link to the video we gave to them.

A very happy May Day to all of you!

In the last 9 months, since I last did a regular update to this blog, our volunteer correspondents have posted a LOT of news stories.

Since the beginning of 2024, our correspondents have posted 14,227 stories — averaging 119 news stories per day.  That means that on average, a new labour news story appears on LabourStart every five minutes, 24 hours a day.

The majority of correspondents remain inactive.  In April, there were 47 active correspdents out of 1,084 — over 95% of the correspondents were inactive.

But we have begun regular mailings to the correspondents for whom we have current email addresses (a bit over 600 of them), and 8 of these mailings have gone out so far this year.  As a result, we’ve noted that a number of inactive correspondents have become active in recent weeks.

 

Since the beginning of August, when this blog was last updated (sorry!) we’ve run seven campaigns in support of workers and their unions, around the world.  These included campaigns in Central America, North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. There are several more in the pipeline.

Here’s the list:

Current campaigns:

– Egypt: Solidarity with Mahalla Textile Workers [11-Mar-2024] – CTUWS – 4,867 supporters
– Panama: Stop attacks on SUNTRACS [21-Dec-2023]  – BWI – 5,270 supporters
– Workers’ Rights, not for Sale! Rescind FSC certification in Military Junta-ruled Myanmar [19-Dec-2023] – BWI – 4,754 supporters

Closed campaigns:

– Québec: Support unions’ call for dialogue and negotiations [28-Nov-2023] – Education International and PSI – 5,095 supporters
– Serbia: Airline must stop union busting [02-Nov-2023] – ETF – 4,670 supporters
– Georgia: Reinstate sacked doctors who protested [11-Oct-2023] – EPSU – 5,785 supporters
– Iran: Free jailed teacher unionists now [14-Sep-2023]- Education International – 6,910 supporters

These campaigns are somewhat smaller than other recent campaigns and there are fewer of them, but we expect in 2024 to host more campaigns and working together with our global union partners, to involve more people in them.

In early February we began podcasting on LabourStart.  We were approached by people at the ‘Working Voices’ show, which airs on KPFK FM Los Angeles every Tuesday evening.  They asked us to make a weekly show.  We have done that every week, though not all our shows are picked up by ‘Working Voices’ for broadcast.

So far, we’ve done 13 interviews with trade union leaders and activists at global level and also in Australia, Belarus, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, Iran, Israel / Palestine, Panama, the UK, Ukraine, and the USA.  Of the 13 interviews, six were with women, six were with men, and one was with a man and a woman.  We recorded two additional interviews this week, and have more scheduled for next week.

Listenership is growing week-on-week.  At the moment, the most popular show was our interview with Australia’s Sally McManus.

Two of the interviews were done by LabourStart Canada’s Pat Bulmer, the other 11 by Eric Lee (assisted on one of them by our intern, David).

If you have any ideas for interviews, please do pass them on.

This blog hasn’t been updated for the last five months (except for occasional updates on the numbers — thanks Derek!).  So one of our New Year’s Resolutions for 2024 is to fix that.  Over the next few days, we’ll do summaries of the major things that have been happening at LabourStart in the last few months — and from now on, we’ll update this blog on a much more regular basis.

The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the first day of September. Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since our last report.

Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in italics.  Lists or accounts which experienced growth are in bold.

 

MAILING LISTS:

The top 10:

English: 84014-83860

French: 7642-7586

German: 5957

Spanish: 5979-5550

Turkish: 4426

Korean: 3321-3320

Italian: 3117-3114

Russian: 2702

Norwegian: 2232-2196

Romanian:  1771

Dutch: 1536-1534

 

The others:

Arabic:  821

Belarusian:  293

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 902

Creole:  11

Czech: 61

Danish: 93

Esperanto: 190-188

Farsi:  207

Finnish:  476-475

Georgian:  156

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  295

Hindi:  80

Hungarian:  186

Indonesian:  460

Japanese: 398

Lithuanian:  63

Malaysian: 21

Polish: 970

Portuguese: 1292

Punjabi:  2

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15

Swedish: 950

Tagalog: 183

Thai:  152

Ukrainian: 493

Vietnamese:  21

Internal:

Executive and Interns:  14

LabourStart Correspondents:  677-672

LabourStart Translators:  97-91

Africa Caucus:  63

Media Contacts: 57

 

FLICKR:

Members:  840-839

Photos:  10233-10216

 

TELEGRAM:

LabourStart channel:  126-124

 

FACEBOOK PAGES/GROUPS:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.  Authority for the LabourStart Brasil page has been devolved to a volunteer in Brazil.

LabourStart.org page likes:  14071-13836

Global Labour News and Information: 9094-9026

LabourStart UK likes:  unavailable-2137

LabourStart Francophone: 607 (last post February 2021)

LabourStart-de: unavailable-500

LabourStart Brasil:  unavailable-552

LabourStart Turkce:  unavailable-2116

LabourStart TV likes: 457-443

LabourStart TV follows:  unavailable-454

LabourStart Vostok:  unavailable-119

LabourStart Esperanto:  unavailable-18

LabourStart Canada-English: 17 (new)

LabourStart Nepal:  7 (last post April 2017)

LabourStart Israel: CLOSED (last post 2018)

 

LINKEDIN:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Group: 2617-2603

Page: 274-263

 

X (TWITTER as-was):

A few months ago the Portuguese, Spanish and Canada-EN accounts were  devolved to volunteers in Brazil, Spain and Canada.  As a result changes to tweet frequency and format have been introduced.  This may have had an effect on our numbers.

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers for these accounts.

We experienced some decline in accounts that usually experience slow growth.  This may be the result of trade unionists closing their Twitter accounts and moving to other platforms (such as Mastodon).

 

Global English: 40123-40217

Canada English: 24923-23054

Global Portuguese: 10754-10828

Global Spanish: 10614-10601

Australia: 10342-10416

USA: 5103-5133

Canada French: 3325-3157

Russian: 47-48

Hebrew:  50 (last tweet 02-2021)

Italian: 508 (last tweet 11-2021)

Swedish: 329-330 (last tweet 2016)

Indonesia: 341 (last tweet 2015)

French: 224 (last tweet 2018)

German: 120 (last tweet 2018)

Japanese: 21 (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)

South Asia (English): 28-27 Placeholder and not yet active.

 

 

The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the first day of August. Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since last month.

Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in italics.  Lists or accounts which experienced growth are in bold.

It has been a slow summer campaigns-wise and so our lists have not grown a great deal.

 

MAILING LISTS:

The top 10:

English: 83860-83714

French: 7586

German: 5957

Spanish: 5550

Turkish: 4426-4412

Korean: 3320

Italian: 3114-3110

Russian: 2702

Norwegian: 2196-2193

Romanian:  1771

Dutch: 1534

The others:

Arabic:  821

Belarusian:  293

Bulgarian: 17

Chinese: 902-901

Creole:  11

Czech: 61

Danish: 93

Esperanto: 188

Farsi:  207

Finnish:  475

Georgian:  156

Greek: 54

Hebrew:  295

Hindi:  80

Hungarian:  186-183

Indonesian:  460

Japanese: 398

Lithuanian:  63

Malaysian: 21

Polish: 970

Portuguese: 1292-1291

Punjabi:  2

Sinhalese: 1

Slovakian: 15

Swedish: 950

Tagalog: 183

Thai:  152

Ukrainian: 493

Vietnamese:  21

Internal:

Executive and Interns:  12

LabourStart Correspondents:  672-669

LabourStart Translators:  91

Africa Caucus:  63

Media Contacts: 51

 

FLICKR:

Members:  839

Photos:  10216-10211

 

TELEGRAM:

LabourStart channel:  124-127

 

FACEBOOK PAGES/GROUPS:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.  Authority for the LabourStart Brasil page has been devolved to a volunteer in Brazil.

LabourStart.org page likes:  13836

Global Labour News and Information: 9026-8968

LabourStart UK likes:  unavailable-2137

LabourStart Francophone: 607 (last post February 2021)

LabourStart-de: unavailable-500

LabourStart Brasil:  unavailable-552

LabourStart Turkce:  unavailable-2116

LabourStart TV likes: 457-443

LabourStart TV follows:  unavailable-454

LabourStart Vostok:  unavailable-119

LabourStart Esperanto:  unavailable-18

LabourStart Nepal:  7 (last post April 2017)

LabourStart Israel: CLOSED (last post 2018)

 

LINKEDIN:

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.

Group: 2603

Page: 263

 

X (TWITTER as-was):

A few months ago the Portuguese, Spanish and Canada-EN accounts were  devolved to volunteers in Brazil, Spain and Canada.  As a result changes to tweet frequency and format have been introduced.  This may have had an effect on our numbers.

No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers for these accounts.

We experienced some decline in accounts that usually experience slow growth.  This may be the result of trade unionists closing their Twitter accounts and moving to other platforms (such as Mastodon).

 

Global English: 40217-40470

Canada English: 23054-23357

Global Portuguese: 10828-10986

Global Spanish: 106701-10738

Australia: 10416-10588

USA: 5133-5206

Canada French: 3157-3372

Russian: 48-47

Hebrew:  50-48 (last tweet 02-2021)

Italian: 508 (last tweet 11-2021)

Swedish: 330-335 (last tweet 2016)

Indonesia: 341 (last tweet 2015)

French: 224 (last tweet 2018)

German: 120 (last tweet 2018)

Japanese: 21 (last tweet 2012)

Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)

Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)

South Asia (English): 27 Placeholder and not yet active.