The Labour Start Thank You Newsletter...Yes You, all of you!
Joseph Raglione
April 17, 2009
Gentle Readers of the American Chronicle, May day is two weeks away and Eric Lee of Labour Start wants to thank you for your past and future efforts...>
I'd like to once again thank the many thousands of you who regularly participate in LabourStart's online campaigns. And I want to tell you how your messages are helping.
Turkey: Our most recent campaign calls on a Turkish company (Sinter Metal) to reinstate workers who were sacked for joining a union. In the last week, over 1,850 of you have sent off messages to the company. The result, according to union sources in Turkey, is that the employer is feeling the pressure. They've now phoned every worker to ask them to stop their resistance and return to work, and have offered money to those who do so. According to a source in the union, "I think that the LabourStart campaign also made him afraid and that's why he began to call workers."
Iran: Nearly two months ago, we asked you to help us flood the Iranian government with messages of protest over the case of workers at the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Plantation and Industry Company. We learned this week from the IUF that the union president, Ali Nejati, has been released after a month in solidarity confinement. He is now free on bail - but other union leaders remain imprisoned. Our campaign, which has so far sent over 6,770 messages, is having an effect.
Iraq: Our campaign in support of the Iraqi teachers union -- which faced the threat of a government takeover -- has contributed to a somewhat improved situation. Two weeks ago, the teachers were able to hold a large, peaceful protest in Baghdad and the union is due to meet with the Minister for Civil Society Organisations, Dr. Thamer Jaffer, who is actually the one who started the problem in the first place. Your 4,500 messages which were received by Iraqi embassies in London, Ottawa, Canberra and elsewhere have certainly helped keep up the pressure.
I'm convinced that if we ramp up the pressure, working together with the brave trade unionists on the ground, we can win important victories in all three countries.
We can persuade Sinter Metal -- which is facing a court battle with the union that it will almost certainly lose -- to back down and re-hire the sacked union members. We can convince the Iranian government to release the other jailed Haft Tapeh union leaders. And we can get the Iraqi government to back down on its threats against the teachers' union.
We can do this if we can persuade many more trade unionists to send off messages.
This message is being sent to the 60,000 subscribers to LabourStart's mailing lists in ten languages. If each one of you will make an effort to forward this message to other members of your own union, to write about these cases on your blogs and websites, and to talk up these campaigns in the workplace and at union meetings, we can do this.
Our unions have millions of members. We should be sending many more messages of protest than we have done so far.
We're two weeks away from the international workers' holiday, May Day. Let's hope that this year we'll be able to celebrate with these workers in Turkey, Iran and Iraq -- and many others -- by defeating efforts to bust their unions, defending workers' rights and building international solidarity.
I know I can count on you.
Eric Lee
To unsubscribe send an email to labourstart-en-unsubscribe@unionlists.org.uk
with the subject 'unsubscribe'.
I'd like to once again thank the many thousands of you who regularly participate in LabourStart's online campaigns. And I want to tell you how your messages are helping.
Turkey: Our most recent campaign calls on a Turkish company (Sinter Metal) to reinstate workers who were sacked for joining a union. In the last week, over 1,850 of you have sent off messages to the company. The result, according to union sources in Turkey, is that the employer is feeling the pressure. They've now phoned every worker to ask them to stop their resistance and return to work, and have offered money to those who do so. According to a source in the union, "I think that the LabourStart campaign also made him afraid and that's why he began to call workers."
Iran: Nearly two months ago, we asked you to help us flood the Iranian government with messages of protest over the case of workers at the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Plantation and Industry Company. We learned this week from the IUF that the union president, Ali Nejati, has been released after a month in solidarity confinement. He is now free on bail - but other union leaders remain imprisoned. Our campaign, which has so far sent over 6,770 messages, is having an effect.
Iraq: Our campaign in support of the Iraqi teachers union -- which faced the threat of a government takeover -- has contributed to a somewhat improved situation. Two weeks ago, the teachers were able to hold a large, peaceful protest in Baghdad and the union is due to meet with the Minister for Civil Society Organisations, Dr. Thamer Jaffer, who is actually the one who started the problem in the first place. Your 4,500 messages which were received by Iraqi embassies in London, Ottawa, Canberra and elsewhere have certainly helped keep up the pressure.
I'm convinced that if we ramp up the pressure, working together with the brave trade unionists on the ground, we can win important victories in all three countries.
We can persuade Sinter Metal -- which is facing a court battle with the union that it will almost certainly lose -- to back down and re-hire the sacked union members. We can convince the Iranian government to release the other jailed Haft Tapeh union leaders. And we can get the Iraqi government to back down on its threats against the teachers' union.
We can do this if we can persuade many more trade unionists to send off messages.
This message is being sent to the 60,000 subscribers to LabourStart's mailing lists in ten languages. If each one of you will make an effort to forward this message to other members of your own union, to write about these cases on your blogs and websites, and to talk up these campaigns in the workplace and at union meetings, we can do this.
Our unions have millions of members. We should be sending many more messages of protest than we have done so far.
We're two weeks away from the international workers' holiday, May Day. Let's hope that this year we'll be able to celebrate with these workers in Turkey, Iran and Iraq -- and many others -- by defeating efforts to bust their unions, defending workers' rights and building international solidarity.
I know I can count on you.
Eric Lee
To unsubscribe send an email to labourstart-en-unsubscribe@unionlists.org.uk
with the subject 'unsubscribe'.
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