Reflections on a great conference

Publicado: 6 Octubre 2009
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 We thank our Irish host union MANDATE for organising everything in Dublin, especially for the great evening programme at the “Abbey Tavern”, with Irish music and good atmosphere.



We had sunny weather (most of the time) and I hope you all had the chance to discover a bit of the city during the week. The hotel was only 15 minutes from the centre of the city and that gave most of us the chance to see a bit of the wonderful city.



We achieved a lot during the week and the signing of the global agreement with Inditex was just the most obvious of our achievements. And certainly, the signing of the agreement gives us all hope; we can achieve fifty agreements with multinationals before Nagasaki in 2010.

The workshops were useful and were very well received and they should be, because I think that one can benefit from the relaxed way of talking together. It is also a good way of digesting the information one gets during the conference, be that during the workshop, the speeches or in a dialogue with unionist from other countries.



Even if we discussed different serious and informative subjects, we had a lot of fun, especially at the last day, where the different unions wore their union t-shirts. The German delegation who were in a very good mood and the Japanese delegation with their “Guinness t-shirts” stood out on that day.



The last day of the conference, with a rousing speech of Philip Jennings, where people exchanged their t-shirts like after a soccer game, created an atmosphere of a community. We fight together for the rights of commerce workers and we will achieve more and more global agreements to improve the situation in multinational companies.

To end with James Larkin’s (a great Irish trade unionist) words which where the last words of Philip Jennings speech:



“The great only appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise.”