http://www.labourstart.org/docs/en/000002.html First of all, thanks so much for your recent donation to LabourStart. Whether you made a one-time donation or are a regular contributor, you make our work possible.
The last month has been a very special one for LabourStart and I wanted to share some of the exciting news with you.
As you probably know, we've launched a number of important new campaigns. Our campaign in support of Mexican trade unionists was central to the global Days of Action called by the IndustriALL global union last month. And more recently, we were asked by the International Trade Union Confederation and two global union federations to lead the way with an online appeal to release the more than 100 public sector trade unionists arrested in Turkey.
These campaigns are larger than ever, and they're making a difference on the ground.
In January we published our book, Campaigning Online and Winning, and are very pleased at the response so far. We've now added a Kindle e-book edition and a French version as well. And we've begun work on LabourStart's second book – on the global labour movement – due out by May Day.
A couple of weeks ago we announced our third annual survey of trade union use of the net and we've already gotten more than 2,000 trade unionists to participate. These surveys are enormously useful to trade unions as we come to grips with new technology that changes all the time.
One thing that doesn't change is the massive number of languages we speak – and LabourStart is committed to making our news and campaigns available in as many of these as we can, thanks to our volunteer translators.
In the last month we've launched campaigns and created mailing lists for the first time in Czech, Slovak, Finnish, Esperanto and Tagalog. Our campaign in support of public sector workers in South Korea appeared in an unprecedented 23 languages.
We've made our news service available for unions to use on their websites for some time now and last month we announced that we had created individual newswires for each of the 50 US states (in addition to existing newswires for all the Canadian provinces). This is allowing local unions to make even better use of LabourStart in their websites.
Our own site is due for an overhaul and we already have an alternative design nearly ready for launch. It will be a cleaner and more modern interface and I hope you'll like it.
One of our very biggest expenses has been our mailing lists – which I guess is inevitable once you've grown as we have, with over 100,000 addresses. But we're always looking for ways to keep our expenses to the absolute minimum, which is why we're currently migrating all our lists to a less expensive system – one that should see savings of up to 90%.
LabourStart depends on your generosity – and the generosity of your union. Please encourage your local or branch union to make a donation to LabourStart today. Full details are here. or
Thanks!
Eric Lee
(reprint of item from Eric Lee)
