A football pitch of packed seating fills one’s field-of-view, multiple cameras beam the platform onto cinema screens, and theatrical lighting adjusts to suit the intended mood.
Watching delegates mill about, every sartorial enthusiasm, body shape and hair arrangement of is visible – although, en mass, it is probably whiter and slightly older crowd than the general, urban population. Unlike some unions, women are possibly in the slight majority. The kindly, comradeliness common to trades unionists is everywhere evident, likewise the gathering of old friends.
The staging is dramatic. Congress opens with a huge image of earth from the sky, interspersed with aerial shots of cities and affirming slogans: ‘Tomorrow needs us’, ‘Tomorrow needs diversity’, and ‘Tomorrow needs equality’.
The cinematic presentation is interrupted by a band, performing Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up. Ver.di’s delegates need little encouragement and the whole hall soon sways on its feet and claps along. They are rewarded with contributing musicians beamed in to perform solos from Pretoria, Kiev and Potsdam among a dozen locations. It is the glamour and spectacle of a tv special in the service of the workers.
A senior official later tells me that this is Ver.di’s first experiment with such full-on audio-visual theatrics – he was breathing a sigh of relief at the overwhelmingly popular reaction.
Infectious enthusiasm
By reputation, Ver.di is the most left-wing of Germany’s mega unions, so the next speaker, and his reception, is a surprise. Kai Wegner is the Christian Democrat mayor of Berlin who has recently courted controversy by appearing to contemplate collaborating with Alternative For Deutschland, a far-right party hitherto considered beyond the pale of respectable Germany politics. Wegner is an experienced crowd pleaser, however, and with a mixture of charm and jokes, he has the audience laughing and clapping its way through his 20 minutes at the rostrum. Even Olaf Scholtz, sitting in the front row, soon rocks with laughter.
The German Chancellor would take the podium shortly, but not before the return of the band for a hard-rocking cover of En Vogue’s Free Your Mind. A contemporary dance troop filled a further interlude on the opening day. Never before have such lavish production standards been applied to the case for bread and roses.
The Chancellor is not a born orator, but he won warm applause for his defence of the welfare state and his insistence that Germany needs more collective agreements. As he spoke a significant minority of delegates raised signs opposing the SPD government’s recently-increased defence spending. Conference organisers might have winced, but it was noticeable that even the protestors clapped with enthusiasm at sections of Scholt’s speech.
The biggest cheers on day one were reserved for Ver.di’s chairman, Frank Werneke. He complained that the gap between Germany’s rich and poor is growing, observed that economic crisis often benefit the rich, and recommitted his union to: “child protection, equal educational opportunities from daycare to training to university, and a society built on solidarity, democracy, justice and co-determination”. It seemed to be exactly what delegates wanted, and they rewarded him with a standing ovation of several minutes.
Congress runs until Saturday. It has 1,037 motions to consider, with sessions potentially lasting late into the night – perhaps, unsurprising given the union’s scope. Delegates who retain the infectious enthusiasm I observed until their day or rest, will be true heroes of labour. If they subsequently carry that spirt that into their communities and workplaces, then surely they will be rewarded with even broader support for their message of inclusion, investment and workplace democracy?
Tim Dawson is the Deputy General Secretary of the IFJ