LRG Network Series 2021
to Wednesday, September 14, 2022, 5:30 PM
LRG Network Series 2021
to Wednesday, September 14, 2022, 5:30 PM
Mr. Anand Narayanrao Jammu is a long-standing trade unionist with extensive experience in public life. In 2002, he joined the trade union movement, and formed a number of unions with permanent, casual and contract workers in the Nagpur Municipal Corporation. For the last 18 years, he has mainly worked focused on the unorganized sector.
Currently, he is very much involved in organising the contractual health workers serving various health programmes announced by the union government of India.
Throughout his career, he has had a leading role in the successful implementation of the minimum wage for sanitation workers, as well as in getting the “Provident Fund Act” extended to the casual sanitation workers.
Andrew Cumbers is an academic and political activist. Trained initially as an economic geographer, he is currently Professor of Political Economy at the University of Glasgow and Editor in Chief of the journal Urban Studies. He holds a European Research Council Advanced Grant: ‘Global Remunicipalisation and the Post-Neoliberal Turn’. His current research focuses upon the role of economic democracy and public participation in creating more equitable and sustainable forms of development. Outside of academia, he has been writing and advocating for democratic forms of public ownership for almost three decades. He was heavily involved in co-producing the UK Labour Party’s proposals for public ownership between 2016-19.
He is currently working with the Amsterdam based Transnational Institute and the global trade union federation, Public Services International, to research and advocate for democratic local publicly owned services. He is the author of Reclaiming Public Ownership: Making Space for Economic Democracy (Zed) and more recently The Case for Economic Democracy (Polity).
Banaani Deka joined PSI in 2020, as Project Organiser for the project “Gender Justice for quality public health and social services in India”. She works closely with the PSI affiliated unions organising Community Health Workers (ASHA and Anganwadi Workers) in India and coordinates the CHW Campaign for Decent Work in South Asia that was launched in 2020 demanding recognition of Community Health Work as Work and aiming at bringing gender equality and gender-responsive quality public services in the region.
Carlos Carrión-Crespo is the specialist for public services and utilities in the Sectoral Policies Department of the ILO since 2008. An attorney since 1999, he also holds a Ph.D. in History. He has published several journal articles on labour relations law and history, cited in law decisions and history books. He has actively promoted the ratification of ILO Convention No.151, and has coordinated or authored several ILO publications on social dialogue and the protection of whistle-blowers in the public service.
Cecilia Fraga Utges is a Sociologist (University of Buenos Aires), Master in Gender Studies and PhD in Social Sciences (El Colegio de México, Mexico). She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at CONICET, based at the Interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of Public Policy (CIEPP). She teaches Social Research Methodology at the Universidad Metropolitana para la Educación y el Trabajo (UMET).
Her research interests include: the organisation of care, social protection, sustainability of life, gender studies and gender violence.
Dr Christina Colclough is founder of the Why Not Lab - a boutique value-driven consultancy that puts workers at the centre of digital change. She is regarded as a thought leader on the future of work(ers) and the politics of digital technology. Christina is a Board and Committee member in several international bodies and a consultant on PSI's project "Our Digital Future".
Daniel Bertossa is Assistant General Secretary at Public Services International (PSI) - the Global Union Federation of 700 trade unions representing 30 million public service workers in 154 countries.
He has previously worked for unions in Australia and the UK, where he organised local government and municipal workers, health and social services, education and private sector service workers, leading multiple campaigns for better pay and job security, and against outsourcing and precarious work. He has previously been Ministerial Advisor for Public Sector Management, Local Government and Planning, Aboriginal Affairs and Family and Community Services and a Director in the Cabinet Office of the Government of South Australia.
Danny currently co-ordinates global policy and leads PSI's economic policy work in trade, tax, debt and the future of quality public services. Danny is inter alia the co-chair of the steering committee of the Independent Commission on Reform of International Corporate Tax (ICRICT), Chair of the management committee of the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) and a Member of the Advisory Committee of the Centre for Research in Employment and Work at the University of Greenwich.
Daniel is the Manager of Industrial, Rules, Governance, and Compliance for the United Services Union, one of the largest municipal employee unions in Australia. He is also the Chair of the ‘Council Services by Council Workers’, Committee which looks to kick-start municipalisation efforts in Daniel’s home-state of New South Wales.
Daria Cibrario is Local and Regional Government Officer at Public Services International (PSI). Prior to this role, Daria served as elected Political Secretary for the Food and Drink Sector at the European Federation of Food, Tourism and Agriculture Trade Unions (EFFAT) in Brussels and as International Officer for the Food and Drink sector at the International Union of Food Workers (IUF) in Geneva. She holds a Master’s in Politics of the World Economy from the London School of Economics.
David McDonald is Professor of Global Development Studies at Queen’s University, Canada, and Director of the Municipal Services Project.
David Hall is a Visiting Professor at the University of Greenwich, London, in the Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU), of which he was Director from 2000-2013. He researches the politics, law and economics of public services, public finance, public ownership, privatisation, PPPs, and outsourcing in water, energy, waste management, healthcare and other sectors – globally, in Europe, and in the UK. He has written many PSIRU reports, journal articles, book chapters, and two books. His recent research covers narratives on public spending and services, lessons from Covid19, remunicipalisation trends, investor-state disputes, and the popularity of public ownership.
He has worked with social movements and trade unions internationally and has contributed to civil society and trade union meetings in over 50 countries, on all continents, and international events including the world congress of Consumers International, meetings of the Asian-European People’s Forum, and international union conferences, especially PSI and EPSU. He is a board member of the UK organisation We Own It.
He was the coordinator of the Watertime project, an EU-funded 3-year research project on decision-making on water in 29 cities in Europe, leading a group of five universities and research institutes (see www.watertime.net ), and guest editor of a special issue of Utilities Policy in 2007. He led a 2-year research project on corruption in 2004-2006, funded by the Wallace Global Foundation; was co-leader of a 2021 project on narrative frameworks about public spending and services, funded by OSF; and a project on public-public partnerships funded by the European Commission, which awarded the contract to PSIRU.
Dries Goedertier works as an advisor for the research department of the Belgian public services trade union CGSP-ACOD. As a trade unionist and author, he stresses the vital importance of public services for economic democracy, social well-being and a just transition. This year, he’s been mostly active in the struggle against the privatisation of social care services in his country.
Edurne Bagué holds a PhD in Social Anthropology with a specialty in Water, Society and Culture from the Center for Research and Social Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS, Mexico). Her PhD thesis analyses the remunicipalisation of water based on the case of Terrassa in Spain. Her line of work is organised around three axes: social models and forms of water management and regulation, from public policies to the impacts of management models on local populations; analysis of institutions and water as a common good and new government practices around water and services; and the relationships between democracy, common goods and sustainability in the framework of the eco-social transition. She collaborates with the UNESCO Chair for Sustainable Human Development at the University of Girona. She has participated in the OAT (Observatori de l’Aigua de Terrassa) since its inception.
Everline A. Aketch (PhD) is the Sub-Regional Secretary for English-Speaking Africa (East, West and Central) for PSI. Everline joined the trade union movement at the age of 23, was elected as branch chairperson by the age of 24 and eventually as Deputy/ National women leader post until 2017 before joining PSI. She is an advocate and educator on issues of human rights as relates to access to quality public services as essentials and drivers to socio-economic transformation, workers’ rights, tax justice, trade and social justice. She is also one of the facilitators in Organising for Power, a programme for empowering workers across the globe sponsored by Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. She represented PSI at the 8th UCLG-Africa Africities Meeting held in Marrakesh on the 20-24th November 2018.
Gerardo Gabriel Juara is a lawyer who has been engaged in labour law with trade union organisations for more than 30 years. He has postgraduate studies in labour law (University of Buenos Aires, University of Salamanca, ILO-Santiago de Chile), Green Economy (ITCILO-Torino), economics and law of climate change (FLACSO-Buenos Aires), and in tools for adaptation and mitigation of climate change (University of Quilmes).
He works at CEAMSE, a state-owned company formed by the Province of Buenos Aires and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, responsible for waste management in the metropolitan area.
Currently, he is the Environmental Secretary of the “Asociación gremial de obreros y empleados de la conservación Ambiental”, a trade union organisation that brings together workers in the integrated management of solid urban waste in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, and he is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Argentine Confederation of Transport Workers (CATT).
Gina McKay is a 2SLGBTQ+, Métis, feminist, labour movement activist and leader engaged in the regional, national, and international labour movement. She is a proud working member on numerous equity & human rights committees including the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC).
Gina was recently elected Equity Vice President – LGBTQ2SI+ to the Canadian Labour Congress Canadian Council and as President of CUPE Manitoba. She is speaking here on behalf of CUPE National.
Helene Davis Whyte, President of the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions and General Secretary of the Jamaica Association of Local Government Officers (JALGO), is a trade unionist by profession, who has been actively involved in the trade union movement for almost 40 years.
Mrs. Davis Whyte was lead negotiator for the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions in public sector wage negotiations with the Government of Jamaica for over ten years, a position she gave up when she was elected President of the JCTU in 2016. She is a member of the Economic Programme Oversight Committee, the Crime Management Oversight Committee and the National Partnership Council and she is also a past member of the Boards of the National Housing Trust and the HEART Trust.
Jon Richards is Assistant General Secretary (Bargaining, Negotiating and Equalities) for UNISON. UNISON is UK’s largest union, with more than 1.3 million members , of which three quarters of a million working in local government and linked employers.
Jon sits on the UK Government Department for Education’s Permanent Secretary’s Advisory Group. He is Vice Chair of the England and Wales Local Government Pension Scheme Advisory Board and sits on the TUC’s Public Sector Liaison Group, their Education Unions Forum and their Alliance for Science.
He represents the European Public Services Union on both the EU’s Education and the Local Government Social Dialogues and on PSI’s Education Support Workers Network.
He previously worked in Local Government, HIV Social Care and Social Research.
He studied geology at King’s College, University of London.
Kannan Raman is the PSI Sub Regional Secretary for South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka). An active trade unionist since 1988, he joined PSI in 2004, as PSI Project Coordinator for the South Asia region. He has planned and organised workplace campaigns in the newly formed electricity corporations and private sector water companies and encouraged several unions‘ young and women members to take an active role in the Women’s workers’ network.
He has led and coordinated the work with the Global Union Federations in South Asia on Core Labour Standard in international financial institution projects and has consistently networked with Civil Society forums.
Karol Florek is an independent researcher based in Cambridge, UK. He joined the trade union movement in 2009, working as a national research officer for United Workers Union (formerly United Voice) in Australia, focusing on the union's care sector campaigns. Since moving to the UK in 2014, Karol has worked as a consultant specialising in the health and care sectors and has undertaken research for PSI, EPSU, UNI Global, CICTAR and the EESC.
Kevin Donoghue is acting Director of campaigns in Fórsa Trade Union. He leads the “More power to you” campaign. This campaign aims to strengthen and enhance local government in Ireland. Kevin is an elected councillor for Dublin City Council and has worked to re-municipalise waste services and introduce a four day week for council workers.
Kudakwashe Munengiwa is a Trade Unionist whose work is focused on bettering the lives of young workers, women, men and people living with disabilities at work places. Having started as a ZUCWU Young Worker Secretary in 2008, he is the current ZUCWU General Secretary from 2019 and the ZCTU Regional Chairperson from 2016 to date.
He started his political carrer as a Ward Youth Organizer (Ward 14 Mkoba) in 2000 and he worked his way up to the Provincial Secretary for Labour (Midlands Province), from 2019 to date.
With a degree in Social Work, Maria José Lacoste has been a municipal worker in the Municipality of Cnel Suárez for 25 years. She is currently Deputy General Secretary of the Municipal Workers' Union of Coronel Suárez, Secretary of gender and equal opportunities and treatment of the FeSiMuBo (Federation of Municipal Unions of Buenos Aires) and Secretary of Women, gender and diversity of the CTM Argentina (Confederation of Municipal Workers of Argentina).She is a councillor candidate for the "Frente de Todos" in CnelSuarez.
Last but not least, she is a woman, mother, worker, trade union and political activist based on popular feminism and social justice.
Licenciada en Trabajo Social, Maria José Lacoste ha sido trabajadora municipal en la Municipalidad de Cnel Suárez desde hace 25 años. Actualmente es Secretaria General Adjunta del Sindicato de Trabajadores Municipales de Coronel Suárez, Secretaria de género e igualdad de oportunidades y trato de la FeSiMuBo ( Federación de Sindicatos Municipales Bonaerenses) y Secretaria de Mujeres, género y diversidad de la CTM Argentina (Confederación de Trabajadores Municipales de Argentina).
Maria José es candidata a concejala por el Frente de Todos en CnelSuarez.
Por último, pero no menos importante, es mujer, madre, trabajadora, militante sindical y política desde el feminismo popular y la justicia social.
Mathilde Penard is a local finance officer at United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) World Secretariat. She supports the implementation of UCLG’s Strategy on localising financing for Sustainable Urbanisation and Territorial Development in three main areas: advocacy, experience sharing and learning, and operational work. She holds a M.A. in Project Management, Cooperation and Development in Latin America.
Mitchell is the national LGBT+ officer for UNISON, the largest union in the UK, where he implements a program of action to improve equality and rights for LGBT+ members. Prior to UNISON, Mitchell was PSI's LGBT+ campaigns officer, where he established the PSI LGBT+ network and co-ordinated with other Global Unions to push for LGBT+ equality at an international union level.
Najwa Hanna is the sub regional secretary for Arab countries at Public Services International – PSI. Holding a master’s degree in administration, as well as a specialization in gender mainstreaming.
A trade union activist with over 25 years of experience in the fields of administration, project coordination and trade union strategies. Her role within PSI consists of enhancing the capacities of public service trade unions in the Arab countries to defend workers’ rights, to ensure quality public services and to adopt a human rights-based approach in dealing with all workers including women.
Nicoletta Grieco, Head of the International Department, FP CGIL, Italy
Nicoletta has a Degree in Literature. She started her trade union activity in 2004. Prior to becoming Head of the International Department of FP CGIL, she followed the work of the Central Public Administrations for several years, and has served as Vice-President of the EPSU Standing Committee on National and European Administrations (NEA).
Robert Ramsay is Senior Research Officer at CUPE, the Canadian Union of Public Employees. His work focuses on municipal governance and finance, on infrastructure and services, and on privatization. Robert holds graduate degrees in Human Geography from the University of Toronto and Communications from Georgetown University. Before being appointed Senior Research Officer, Robert worked as a Professional Officer at the Canadian Association of University Teachers on issues related to academic freedom and federal funding for research.
Rosa Pavanelli - is General Secretary of the global union federation Public Services International (PSI). Elected at PSI’s World Congress in 2012, she was re-elected for a second mandate in 2017. In 2016, Rosa was nominated as Commissioner on the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth (UN ComHEEG), representing the trade union movement, health workers and public services.
Sandra van Niekerk started working as PSI Climate Change Project Coordinator in 2020.
Sandra is responsible for the effective implementation of the PSI climate change strategy in the Africa and Arab Countries Region and acts as a liaison coordinator for climate change work with other PSI regions. She works with relevant trade unions and allies to promote the PSI policy on climate change, and to build capacity and knowledge of this issue in the public sector trade unions. The PSI project work on climate change in Africa and Arab Countries is implemented in Kenya, Zambia, Tunisia, Tanzania, Morocco and Nigeria.
A sociologist and political scientist with a masters degree in political sociology, Verónica Montúfar has a professional background in gender history research, human rights, as the executive secretary for Amnesty International in Ecuador, and trade union education.
She started working for PSI in 2002, as Project Coordinator for the Andean Region in the field of educating and organizing women. In 2015, she was appointed as the Gender Equality Officer for PSI.