New Forms of Service Delivery in municipalities, good practice for occupational health and safety and social dialogue are interlinked!

EPSU-CEMR final conference, Barcelona 14 November 2016

EPSU-CEMR final conference, Barcelona 14 November 2016

(18 November 2016) CEMR and EPSU organized the final conference in Barcelona to discuss the final project report and recommendations on new forms of service delivery for municipalities, the contribution of social dialogue and well-being at work.

The aim of the project:

to explore new policies and forms of restructuring in public service delivery and link it to trends and policies on health and safety at EU Level
identify the challenges and opportunities for public sector workers and employers of new forms of work organization and technological developments
jointly evaluate and diagnose how social partners can be supportive in these reform processes
highlight the relationship between restructuring and the well-being at work and the prevention and implementation of health and safety
provide knowledge and practices in relation to “good restructuring” in the public sector and the role of social partners

Digitalisation, Migration, Economic Governance and recruitment &retention strategies at the heart of the project

Four seminars were organized throughout the project on four areas of action (digitalization, migration, economic governance, recruitment &retention strategies) that had been identified as main drivers of new service delivery in the Joint Framework of Action on Restructuring on Local Government. Two seminars were organized in Brussels and the two others in Zagreb and Berlin.

Four separate reports were first produced by PSIRU (Jane Lethbridge, Director of PSIRU) on the four areas of action which were drawn into a final project report (50 pages).

At the final conference in Barcelona, participants discussed the recommendations drawn from the four workshops and how to follow-up with a concrete framework on health and safety. The recommendations issued are the following:

Achieve a shared understanding by social partners of the nature of the problem e.g. on occupational health and safety
Establish an effective information an consultation process with all key stakeholders e.g. when introducing digitalization for services users and workers
Implement actions in an transparent way so that all stakeholders understand what is being done, e.g. how resources are being allocated for social integration of third-country nationals
Gather adequate data to both inform an analysis of a problem and to oversee the implementation of a solution
Make public services accountable to the local population, e.g. designing and delivering services and employment policies which reflect local demographic trends
Design and implement monitoring and evaluation strategies e.g. on new forms of digital services and impact on labour process
Provide adequate training for workforce when introducing new forms of service delivery e.g. new ways of addressing occupational health and safety problems

The conference closed with a panel debate with concrete examples on how to achieve quality employment and delivery in public services in local administration. Representatives from the City of Barcelona (Director of Migration), the European Commission (DG Employment), EPSU (General Secretary) and UDITE (Spanish representative) formulated their vision on how trade unions and employers can shape the future of local government administrations. They took account of the need to go beyond an agenda of achieving “more with less” in public administrations. To continue working on the impact of digitalization and migration on jobs and services was considered as a shared view to continue a debate in Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee Local and Regional Government. EPSU General Secretary Jan Willem Goudriaan raised the need to tackle climate change as part of a joint agenda in cities and local government. The Director of Migration from the City of Barcelona highlighted the natural competence of local governments when it comes to the integration of migrants, the challenges of undocumented migrants and the project SAIER that delivers services to migrants in Barcelona through joint social partner approach between the city and trade unions.

The Social Partners in Local Government CEMR and EPSU will discuss a more concrete framework of action at their Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee on 5th of December stemming from the conclusions of this project.