Session 1: Current campaigns

9-11 am CET |  8-10 am GMT | 9-11 pm NZDT

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Session 2: New policies and tools

1-3 pm CET | 12-2 pm GMT |  8-10 am EST

Find your local time here

REGISTER HERE (for two sessions) Language: English

DRAFT AGENDA

Session 1: New remunicipalisation/insourcing campaigns (120’)

9-11 am CET |  8-10 am GMT | 9-11 PM NZDT

§1 NEW ZEALAND: Auckland swimming pool and leisure centers campaign (up to 40’)

• Benedict Ferguson, Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi, Aotearoa (PSA)

§2 IRELAND: Dublin Waste and the campaign to keep South Dublin County legal department in-house (up to 40’)

• Richy Carrothers, Head of the Local Government & Local Services division and head of the Municipal division, FÓRSA

§3 UK: Public Ownership and Contracting Out in Public Transport (up to 40’)

• James Bartholomeusz, Urban Transport Manager, ITF

Conclusions and Next Steps

Session 2: Policies and tools for remunicipalisation/insourcing(120’)

1-3 pm CET | 12-2 pm GMT |  8-10 am EST

§4 UK: The Starmer Government and insourcing – friends or foes (up to 40’)

• Abigail Hunt, Policy Officer - Public Services TUC

§5 THE NETHERLANDS – Reflections on democratic ownership and governance of insourced services (up to 40’)

• Jan Winde, Senior Adviser, FNV Overheid

§6 CANADA: CUPE resources for bringing our work back in-house  (up to 40’)

• Emily Niles, Senior Research Officer, Anti-Privatisation, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)

Conclusions and Next Steps 

BACKGROUND

Over the past ten years, PSI has closely worked with affiliates to distil the collective trade union knowledge emerged from their experience of de-privatising public services. By working together, PSI affiliates have developed comparative labour analyses of remunicipalisation and in-sourcing strategies, challenges and solutions that are invaluable tools for peer learning and mutual support.

PSI’s Local and Regional Government (LRG) Global Network’s Action Plan 2022-2028 “Building the future of local public services” mandates PSI and its affiliates to keep on building strategic intelligence around the labour and industrial relations dimensions of insourcing and remunicipalisation through action-oriented research, analyses of trade union strategies, and by identifying, documenting and disseminating good practices. It also encourages peer-learning and co-strategising among PSI unions on union tactics to bring back local public services into public control and democratic ownership, all while organising, protecting jobs and conditions of public service workers in the transition. It requires to do so and by working together on real cases through an LRG union practitioners’ working group.

This is the 2025 workshop of the PSI Global LRG Network’s Working Group (WG) on Remunicipalisation/In-sourcing. On this occasion, PSI is convening the WG in two sessions at different times of the same day to enable the participation of all PSI regions. Recordings of the contributions will be made available of the PSI website as part of the resource database of the PSI’s e-learning “Taking public services back home” available in 16 languages. A previous session of this WG gathered in 2022 – the recordings and resources from that session are available here.