Local and Regional governments (LRG) bring public services directly to users and communities. They are at the forefront of public service provision and emergency responses, and provide a wide spectrum of basic services to metropolises, cities, towns and rural areas. These include water and sanitation, waste collection, management and disposal, local security, firefighting and public emergency services, forest, parks and public space maintenance, education, culture, libraries and recreation, care and social welfare, healthcare, social and public housing stock management, migration and refugee services, placement and unemployment services. 

Despite the key role of LRG workers worldwide and the fact they make the bulk of the public sector, LRG workers face specific challenges – including poor access to labour and trade union rights. Across the Africa continent, there are specific challenges that local government faces:

• mass urbanization and demographic growth;

• widespread threats to public health and the environment (e.g. chemical, plastic, e-waste pollution etc.) and degradation of natural resources;

• climate- and economic-related displacement;

• devolution reforms with unfunded mandates matched with weak municipal fiscal systems

• high levels of informality, including in the delivery of local vital public services. 

Many African LRGs to deliver the local public services their residents and communities need. Local quality public service access can therefore be particularly difficult and inequitable in African cities, towns, and rural villages. These circumstances also mean that LRG workers’ rights and conditions in Africa can be very poor, with high level of precariousness, low worker to user ratio, lack of training and OSH measures, inadequate working tools, non-payment of wages for months and especially gross violations of the fundamental trade union rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining.  Women often bear the brunt of the precariousness and of the poor working conditions and trade union and labour rights violations of many LRG jobs. 

PSI, and the regional network of local and regional government trade unions – AMALGUN (the African Municipal and Local Government Unions Network) have already undertaken many initiatives to build solidarity, strengthen particular sectors (notably the solid waste management sector) and strengthen the relationship with the local government association – UCLG Africa – around issues of common concern. Building and strengthening the relationship with UCLG Africa has resulted in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), as well as agreement on pursuing pilot social dialogue case studies designed to strengthen local government in particular cities. 

ACTIVITY OBJECTIVES

1. To assess the situation in the LRG sector across Africa, and trade union priorities with respect to:

• trade union rights

• working conditions

• occupational health and safety

• devolution and municipal finances

• remunicipalisation initiatives

• impact of climate change on municipalities 

2. To give a voice to the issues and concerns of waste workers at a local government level, acknowledge the depth of the knowledge they carry about the service they deliver, and highlight the vital role they play – a role that is often ignored, undermined and devalued. 

3. To explore the key issues and concerns from labour’s perspectives to feed into the UNEP Negotiations on the development of an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment  at INC-3 taking place in Nairobi, Kenya. 

4. To develop a programme of action for 2024 for AMALGUN and LRG affiliates across the continent, drawing on current initiatives already underway (such as the social dialogue pilot studies in the solid waste management sector with UCLG-Africa, and the existing Global LRG Programme of Action).