Inside LabourStart

It’s here.  Please spread the word.

These are the active campaigns at the moment on LabourStart with the total number of supporters and launch date for each one:

• Iraq: Union leader forcibly relocated – 3,111 (30 May)
• Swaziland: Protest mass arrests of trade unionists – 2,210 (21 April)
• Bahrain: Stop the attack on the trade union movement – 4,425 (19 April)
• Chile: Government Reneges on Mine Safety Standards; Demand Reform – 3,280 (09 March) – closing down this week

(The other Iraq campaign is about to close down – it got 3,808 messages since 10 May.)

The last few days have seen some substantial donations come in.  The total currently stands at  £6,992.

As a result, here are the new breakdowns by country:

• Canada £3,056
• UK £1,507
• Other £954 (£854 from the Education International)
• Australia £497 (an additional £2,616 pledged and invoiced)
• USA £523
• Germany £180
• Ireland £154
• New Zealand £121

Last year we took in £11,500 – so we need to raise at least £2,000 more to beat that.

One of the largest campaigns we ever ran on LabourStart was back in 2006 when we demanded that the Iranian government free jailed trade union leader Mansour Osanloo.

Today, more than four years later, Osanloo is finally free.

You can hear  a recording of Osanloo’s voice (1 minute in Farsi followed by English translation) when I interviewed him on his visit to London several years ago.

He was arrested shortly thereafter.

Yesterday, according to .net magazine, Twitter unveiled a ‘Follow’ button.  Today, it’s on LabourStart (upper left corner):

It’s also on our campaigns – both on the initial campaign page, and on the page you see after you complete sending off a message.

Note the number of followers – hopefully, this will grow.

We’ve been asked by PSI do a campaign in support of public sector workers in Botswana, which we’ll launch tomorrow. Full coverage of the situation in that country can be found here.

The winning video in this year’s Labour Video of the Year competition is this one.  There were 1,168 votes cast – much lower than we had last year.  Of those, 280 agreed to be on LabourStart’s mailing list and had not been on our list before.

We’ve been asked by the Trades Union Congress (UK) and others to support the Iraqi trade  unions with this new campaign.

I’ve just sent out a message to the 3,654 members of UnionBook saying that unless they can recruit another 1,346 members in the next 100 days, we’ll have to consider shutting down the site.  I’m not saying we’re shutting it down on September 4th, 2011, but if we can’t grow it, if people aren’t really using it, it’s not worth the time and effort being put it into it.  Let’s see what kind of response we get.

Update after 3 days (30.5): We’re up to 3,707 – a gain of 53.  I’ll be writing to all UnionBook members again in about 11 days – we’ll see if we’re on course for 5,000 members by then.