Dear fellow workers and friends,

We’ve reached our 2000 communications, 2000 newsletters sent to our growing list of subscribers. We started out as an electronic newsletter, selecting one or more articles each day and sending them to our mailing list.

We didn’t give it a specific name, we simply started signing it Sirel, short for Rel-UITA News Service, in Spanish.

Just a few months later, we officially baptized our open communication channel with the name “Sirel”.

We changed the format a few months ago and we no longer send the full article, only the daily headlines, distinguishing our production from any news items reposted from other web pages, along with a photograph selected for the day.

This is what we now call La Rel-Hoy*, and it responds to a change in the concept of communication. Now you can choose which articles you wish to read without having to go through our website’s home page first. So we’ve given you a shortcut to our contents and we’ve increased your ability to choose what you want to read, besides showing you an image especially selected to express something in particular, to communicate an idea, to add its own story, feeling and visual appeal.

We’ve produced 2000 numbers of what we called Sirel and is now La Rel-Hoy*. But whatever the name, we’ve reached out to you 2000 times through cyberspace to communicate something, to report on important news and events, to remind you that you are not alone in your struggles, your doubts, your victories and your setbacks.

But it’s more than just 2000: since we inaugurated this web page we’ve published nearly 12,500 articles, with more than 23,000 photographs.

As its name indicates, the aim of the Rel-UITA News Service is to offer you -our affiliates and friends- a communication service where you can make your demands and struggles known to a wider audience, where you can publish many news that are not covered by mainstream media because they’re not considered news, but which are often truly vital to the labor movement.

Fully aware that the continuation of Sirel depends on you, on how much you identify with our Service, we can say that we’re pleased with what we do and how we do it, but that we’re not satisfied.

Our aim is to continue improving our service, striving to become more efficient and effective, and faster when we need to be faster, more wide-reaching and diverse in our scope, gradually incorporating all the possibilities offered by the Internet, like audio and video, live coverage of activities and events, and so many other things…

Lastly, a reference to the image that illustrates this small celebration: This picture really captures the spirit of the IUF’s Latin American Regional Office, Rel-UITA, an organization made up of many men and women aligned under a common goal and with a common meaning, each fulfilling a role and serving the collective whole.

This face communicates joy, hope, the quiet conviction that we have a future to look forward to, but that even though we’ve made great progress, there’s still a lot of work to do. And that that’s something good.

We are La Rel. It’s our future. Our path, together.

From Spanish: ‘La Rel – TODAY’