There’s a saying the in the trade union movement that if workers can last one day longer than the employer during a strike, they will have won.

I was reminded of this while reading an appeal from striking Ford workers at a factory near St. Petersburg, Russia. Those workers have been engaged in an extraordinary struggle — the longest strike in Russia this century. While most strikes end after one day, these workers have been out for nearly three weeks and still counting. Meanwhile, the company refuses to negotiate with them until they return to work.
Our colleagues in Russia have asked to us to use the Internet to try to raise strike funds for the union. As I write these words, the union has only about four day’s worth of funds left. Amazingly, workers all over Russia have been donating from their own pockets to help the Ford strikers. Everyone seems to understand the historic significance of this dispute.
In early December LabourStart launched an online fund-raising campaign with the modest aim of raising enough money to keep the strike going for one more day — $20 per worker for 700 workers, or $14,000 total.
It is raising the money in a way which is both transparent (so the union in Russia will know how much is being donated) and which is also designed to encourage people to give generously.
We’ve long raised money online using PayPal, which is a secure way to donate with a credit or debit card.
But what we’re doing now is using a service called ChipIn (http://www.chipin.com) which acts as a kind of filter between our donors and PayPal, and which automatically updates a little Flash movie that shows the rising total of donations (in real time) and how many donors have contributed. That Flash movie is embedded on LabourStart’s front page (http://www.labourstart.org).
ChipIn also gives us a little blog-like page to post updates about this current fund-raising drive.
ChipIn was created to give charities a way to easily raise money — especially those which do not have the means to accept credit card donations. It can also be used by unions for their own fundraising drives, as we’re doing now.