Trade unions and global restructuring

In my new book Fighting for Water: Resisting Privatization in Europe (Zed Books/Bloomsbury, 2021), I analyse a number of struggles against ...

The question of who controls water and for what purpose makes water inherently political. Whether it’s water sources, water production su...

In June 2010, the UN declared safe access to ‘clean drinking water and sanitation’ a human right. For many this highlighted the importanc...

When in May 2014 98 per cent of Thessaloniki’s citizens voted against the privatisation of their municipal water company EYATH and the Gr...

The European Commission published its proposals for a Recast of the Drinking Water Directive, 1 February 2018. They include amendments to...

The first European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) on ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’ was an enormous success. Between May 2012 and S...

Jan Willem Goudriaan , General Secretary of the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), has written regular updates (see 1 ...

Resistance against water privatisation is one of the success stories in the struggle against neo-liberal globalisation. And where priva...

While movements of resistance against neo-liberal globalization have increasingly become subject of analysis, there is little agreement...

On 9 October, I gave the paper ‘Sic Vos Non Vobis’ – ‘For You, But Not Yours’: The struggle for public water in Italy at the Department ...

Proposals to privatise the water company in Thessaloniki/Greece were overwhelmingly rejected in a referendum on 18 May 2014 with 98 per c...

Last week the Italian Water Movements Forum (Forum) celebrated the anniversary of the victory in the 2011 referenda against water privatisa...

In this guest post, written on request, Jan Willem Goudriaan , Deputy General Secretary of the European Federation of Public Service Unio...

Privatisation is a truly fantastic thing. Privatising public services would result in four benign consequences, we are told: (1) the produc...

Victory in the 2011 referendum against water privatisation had been emphatic. More than 57 per cent of the Italian electorate cas...

Against the background of the global and Eurozone financial crises as well as austerity sweeping across Europe, the pressure on privatisi...

In this guest post, written on request, Jan Willem Goudriaan , Deputy General Secretary of the European Federation of Public Service Unions...