LabourStart

LabourStart was founded in March 1998 as part of the website launched in 1996 by Eric Lee in order to provide updates to his book, The Labour Movement and the Internet: The New Internationalism.

[citation needed] From 1998 through 2002, LabourStart was a project of Labour and Society International (LSI), a non-governmental organisation based in London and initially headed up by Arthur Lipow, Stirling Smith and David Clement.

[citation needed] In order to address this ongoing problem and other structural issues an invitation-only retreat was held in September 2015 in Brussels.

[citation needed] The retreat resulted in the creation of an Executive Committee with formal decision-making authority and a number of issue-specific working groups.

[citation needed] As of November 2015 the various mailing lists are as follows: Social networks also play a role in LabourStart's news distribution and campaigning services.

[citation needed] Twitter followers: Facebook Pages and Groups: In recent years, LabourStart has conducted dozens of global online campaigns on behalf of unions.

These campaigns have led in many cases to companies and governments being compelled to release jailed trade unionists, to negotiate with unions, and so on.

Following small international meetings in London and Washington DC in 2008 and 2009, major events were held in Hamilton, Ontario in 2010,[1] Istanbul in 2011, Sydney, Australia (2012), Berlin, Germany (2014) [1] and Toronto, Canada (2016).

At a meeting of the LabourStart Executive Committee in Brussels in September 2015 the decision was made to offer the site as-is to any interested union or group of trade unionists.

[citation needed] LabourStart has been criticized by some in the digital labour movement including Walton Pantland of Cyberunions for continuing to rely on e-mail as the 'killer app' for online campaigning into the foreseeable future.

These critics tend to see the e-mail-based tactics used by LabourStart as dated and not reflective of the move to smartphones as the primary devices for accessing the internet by trade unionists, especially in the global south.

Attempts are made by LabourStart to explain that it acts at the request of the existing structures of the global labour movement and that its volunteers are not subject to organizational discipline [4].

But attacks on LabourStart, including calls for boycotts of the site and its campaigns [5][permanent dead link‍], resulting from a position taken by one of its high-profile volunteers are regular if not frequent occurrences.

Similarly, disputes within and amongst LabourStart volunteers that reflect the differing positions of the unions and political factions from which they are drawn are regular occurrences.