Public Services Day: Local Union Power, Global Fightback

Across towns, cities and regions our unions are working with the communities they serve to secure real improvements to public services for all, and decent work for the workers who deliver them. We're racking up organising wins that grow our collective bargaining and political power. And we're propelling bold local progressive leaders into office. 

These victories matter.  

They occur at the level closest to the people who use the service - where people see daily what is possible and know the workers who run them. They demonstrate that democracy can be responsive and that when workers unite and act collectively, we can improve conditions and rebuild trust in government and public services. And they create models that can be scaled up and replicated at the national level. 

In the past decade, our collaboration with the Public Futures database has tracked over 700 instances of public services being brought back into public hands. Over 95% occurred not via a central government decision but at the municipal or regional level.  

We’re learning from these wins and honing strategies which support unions to make real improvements for public services and the workers who deliver them. The kind of progressive, inclusive, democratic future which our unions are helping bring to life around the world. 

And the model is working.  

• In Paris, water workers supported improvements to the public water supply following remunicipalisation , leading to reduced prices, democraticized governance, and helping secure a United Nations Public Service Award for transparency, accountability and integrity. 

• In Bostwana, PSI unions secured commitment from the Ministry for Local Government to in-source services and expand publicly provided healthcare. 

• In Sydney earlier this year, a decade-long union campaign successfully brought Northern Beaches Hospital back into public hands, ending a failed public-private partnership. Unions also secured state-level legislation to ban future public-private partnerships for the management of acute hospitals 

• In Islamabad, sanitation workers took their fight against privatisation to the court, winning a ruling that stops rapid outsourcing without union consultation. 

• In Senegal, industrial action through PSI unions has led to massive improvements for 7,600 local government workers, securing formalised contracts, increased wages, and restored dignity. 

• In Manchester, our unions worked with the region to bring the bus network back under public control. Within a year, ridership grew and reliability improved. 

• In Norway, unions partnered with local governments on a program which supported over 1,400 unemployed workers to retrain for careers in healthcare. 

• Across the USA, unions are helping to push state-level leaders to rejoin World Health Organisation programs after Trump withdrew the federal-level government. 

• In New York City, unions propelled Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani to mayoral election victory. Now the labour movement is working with the administration to rapidly deliver policies which improve working people’s lives. Like the city’s first free on-site childcare pilot for municipal workers and a wider programme set to create thousands of free childcare places. These services will put $20,000 a year back in the pockets of working families. To help pay for it, they’ve secured $500 million a year from new progressive taxes on luxury second homes.  

When authoritarian leaders and far right governments see these wins - and realise our power to challenge their agenda is growing - they ramp up their attacks on union leaders. But we are ready for the fightback.  

In Turkey, PSI stood with fifteen women trade unionists — including leaders of the municipal workers’ union — as they faced political persecution by the Erdogan regime. After a 17-year court battle, they finally won full acquittal this year. Co-President of SES Union Nazan Karacabey made clear the importance of international solidarity, saying “Authoritarian governments do not want their actions to be seen. Workers have no one to trust besides our class sisters and brothers in other countries.” 

In Pakistan, global pressure led to the release of over a hundred workers from the All Pakistan Labour Federation, arrested for demanding the payment of allowances to which they were entitled. And in the USA, unions are fighting back against the Trump administration’s targeting of the public sector workforce, winning restored collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of workers. 

And when we fightback, we grow.  

Despite Trump’s assault on union rights, American workers joined their unions in record numbers in 2025, reaching a 16-year high. Across PSI, half a million workers have joined our federation since our last Congress. More than a dozen new unions have affiliated in the past twelve months.  

Unity and growth builds the power needed to shape global policies which improve conditions for local unions. Like last month, when our global labour movement scored a landmark victory at the world’s highest court, with the ICJ ruling that the right to strike is protected under ILO Conventions. This means local organisers and unions can take bold industrial action, knowing there is a higher global authority through which they can work to hold governments to account. PSI will support our members at all levels to bring ILO Cases wherever global labour conventions and worker’s rights are breached. 

Our local victories matter most when they can spread — when a good strategy in one region becomes a playbook for another. That is what international solidarity can do: not only influence policies and protect leaders - but spread local wins and accelerate progress, even in hard political times. 

Our members aren’t waiting for help from above.  

Not from the people who brought us tariffs, wars and budgets balanced off the backs of the poor. Everywhere, workers are organising at the local level, building alliances, and pushing back against austerity, privatisation and intimidation.  

Our Public Service Fightback conference in Madrid on 16 - 17 September will bring together these struggles, learn from each other and build the strategies which work across borders. Join us. 

This is our moment to strengthen grassroots organising, to back bold leaders, to build local power and show that quality local public services with decent work conditions are always possible. City by city. Workplace by workplace.  Ballot by ballot. Member by member.  

We’re growing our power to fightback, from the grassroots all the way up.  

And when we fightback, we win.