Weekly update, 6-10 August 2012
Campaigns:
- I cleared the backlog of translations of campaigns and mass mailings.
- Two new campaigns were launched – Swaziland (7 August) and Turkey DHL (8 August).
- I fixed the mycampaigns.cgi script — while it was working OK, it was forcing the system to use the old website addresses and forwarding.
- The Iraq campaign was closed with fewer than 4,000 messages sent.
- We assisted Unite Here and the IUF with promoting their own campaigns this week; in the former case, this also consisted in giving them a lot of constructive criticism about how to campaign globally.
- Two campaigns were given a special boost this week – the RMT campaign in support of London cleaners on Friday when a 48 strike as launched with picketing outside the Olympics venue, and the Hava-Is campaign for Turkish airline workers – because of the new ITF video. The last of these is our largest campaign at the moment, with well over 8,000 messages sent.
Ukrainian edition: I added 9 correspondents – Masha is co-ordinating this effort. The interface is already working.
London Labour Film Festival: I’ve been promoting this to our lists and via social media. LabourStart is getting a quarter-page ad in the festival program. We are also allowed to distribute our brochure at the door. The festival takes place in mid-September at the Prince Charles Cinema in central London.
App: We’ve been sent an interesting proposal by a company in Canada offering to do this for us; now under consideration.
Conference 2012: Now little more than 3 months away. The organizing committee is meeting again next week. A draft registration form is now ready and a bank account has been set up. Proposals are being discussed for panels.
Conference 2013: There’s been an offer to host this in Vancouver. More details soon.
Office in London: I continue to search – have found one very good candidate on Thursday, am looking at another on Monday and will probably decide then. Packing up of the existing office has already begun.
Fund-raising: We received a substantial one-off donation from the IUF.
Upcoming conferences I’ve been invited to speak at: UNITE Wales in Cardiff in September (“Fifty shades of campaigning“); NASUWT in London in November; Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA) in New York City next June. (I will be contacting some of you for help on organizing a panel for the last of these.) I also hope to attend the TUC in Brighton in early September. These are all also opportunities to distribute the LabourStart brochure (1,900+ copies remaining).
Other writing: The current wave of anti-union repression we’re seeing in places like Nigeria and Turkey is the subject of my next regular monthly column for Jungle World.
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This week our global Twitter feed passed the 7,000 followers mark. Currently at 7010.
On the Twitter feed, we’re running about one post per hour plus campaign reminders scattered about. I’m currently running something of a simple survey of our followers to see how they like that rate. Stay tuned.