However, there are less tangible outcomes. A good conference is a community and movement building experience. To be effective, unions have to become more than mere organisations in the workplace, enmeshed in complex state legal systems, active only when the next wage round is fought, or when there is some dispute. Defense of work conditions is central of course, but unions can encompass more than this. To the extent that unions become community representing civilised, humane values in a world where community and all values except efficiency have all but vanished so too will they consolidate and expand.
Good conferences are community-building experiences.
Over the past ten years, strong enduring relationships between leaders across many nations have been forged. There are memories of vigorous debate into the early hours, the singing and dancing, but above all, the recognition of what these leaders had endured for the worker cause. The Malaysian electronics worker, who was a key leader in a strike against a large US multi-national, wept when she explained the forms of victimisation. The Indonesian artist who went to the aid of a woman worker harassed by the police. He was so badly beaten and his leg broken in so many places that he remains severely impaired.