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PSI Guide on Rebuilding the Social Organisation of Care

Care is the activities that are needed to satisfy our basic needs to exist. It is the glue that holds societies together and enables economies to function. It is essential for the existence and the reproduction of societies.

In many countries, caring for the young, elderly, and vulnerable has long been part of social protection and welfare institutions. But years of austerity, neoliberal reforms, and privatisation have resulted in a care system that is failing to provide for the needs of society. It also means that care workers face low wages and exploitation at work.

Across much of the Global South, social care systems are virtually non-existent, and the State is largely absent from its provision. There is also limited or extremely expensive private provision of social care. This means that most care work, including social care, takes place in families and communities and is largely provided by women.

In response to the care crisis, Public Services International (PSI) has focused on shifting approaches to care away from the dominant approach (the ‘care economy’) to the social organisation of care (SOC). PSI is calling for action to ‘rebuild the social organisation of care’ to a new model that puts caring for people over caring for profits. PSI has called for 5Rs as a way forward to fix the care crisis:

  1. Recognise the social and economic value of care work (paid or unpaid) and the human right to care.
  2. Reward, remunerate and represent care work and care workers with professionalised work, equal pay for work of equal value, adequate pensions, comprehensive social protection, healthy and safe working conditions, strong representation, unionisation, and collective bargaining and social dialogue in line with the ILO Decent Work Agenda.
  3. Reduce the burden of unpaid care work on women.
  4. Redistribute care work within households, among all workers, eliminating the sexual division of labour, and between households and State.
  5. Reclaim the public nature of care services and restore the duty and the primary responsibility of the State to provide public care services and develop care systems that transform gender relations and women’s lives – including by financing State’s capacity to invest through fair and progressive taxation and ensuring internationally equal taxing rights of nation States. 

GLI Manchester was commissioned by PSI to produce a guide on Rebuilding the Social Organisation of Care. The guide includes both an Advocacy Guide and an Activity Workbook that aim to assist trade unions and women workers around the world to make PSI’s Care Manifesto an instrument of trade union political action at the local level, to rebuild the social organisation of care for a new model that puts caring for people over caring for profits.

The Advocacy Guide includes information about the key issues facing paid and unpaid care workers and key demands – organised around the 5Rs – to support unions when campaigning around the human right to care and care as a public good. It also includes examples of union action, relevant international standards and further resources that might be useful.

The Activity Workbook contains training materials to strengthen understanding of the key issues and build trade union capacity – particularly amongst women – to enable unions to develop practical action. 

Click here to read the Advocacy Guide in English. 

Click here to read the Advocacy Guide in Spanish. 

Click here to read the Activity Workbook in English. 

Click here to read the Activity Workbook in Spanish. 

The guide is also available as a digital publication on the PSI website. Click here to access the digital publication.

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Fighting for our Future: An IUF Guide on Tackling the Climate Crisis in Intensive Livestock Production

The climate crisis is already destroying the livelihoods of workers across the world. It is of particular concern for workers in livestock production. Livestock production is one of the most emissions intensive sectors in the global food system. The sector is also negatively affected by the impacts of climate change.

Global transformation to a more climate-friendly food system is more urgent now than ever. But this poses huge risks to workers who face potentially negative impacts to their livelihoods.

Unions need to demand a voice to lead and shape the necessary change to ensure that any transition does not leave workers behind. This means fighting for a just transition. Unions need to take action at the local level to facilitate transformation of the global food system.

GLI Manchester was commissioned by the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF) to produce a guide on tackling the climate crisis in intensive livestock production.

‘Fighting for our Future – an IUF Guide on Tackling the Climate Crisis in Intensive Livestock Production’ is now available to read and download.

This guide aims to equip unions representing workers in the meat and dairy sectors to influence the conditions for a just transition, and to propose the necessary transformative solutions to tackle the climate crisis.

This document includes a guide on the climate crisis and an activity workbook.

The guide provides information about the contribution of intensive livestock production to the climate crisis, about why the climate crisis is a union issue, and how unions can take action. The guide sets this in the wider political context. It is important for unions to understand this context to recognise the need for system transformation to address the climate crisis. Unions can use this information to formulate practical demands at the local level.

The activity workbook includes exercises that can help unions to better understand the main issues, to plan for just transition and to develop practical action.

Click here to read and download the guide in English, German, Portuguese, and Spanish.

The guide will also soon be made available in French and Swedish.

Click here for more information about the IUF’s work on the climate crisis.

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Crossing the Divide: Informal Workers and Trade Unions Building Power

FES Crossing the divide

Millions of people throughout the world work in the informal economy. In many countries, most workers are obliged to work informally, particularly in the global South – although a growing number are to be found in advanced industrial, or post-industrial economies. This is not a choice for most informal workers, but the only means of survival in the absence of formal jobs.

GLI Manchester was commissioned by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) as a direct follow-up to the Trade Unions in Transformation project of the FES Global Trade Union Programme to produce a paper: ‘Crossing the Divide: Informal Workers and Trade Unions Building power’.

The paper reflects experiences and policies from examples of organisations across the spectrum of those with an interest in relationships between informal worker organisations and the trade union movement. This includes both international and national organisations, and national trade union centres and national sector-based unions and associations. The major focus is on informal worker organisation in Asia, Africa and Latin America, but includes some perspectives from organisations in the global North representing precarious and informal workers.

Click here to read the paper in English.

Click here to read the paper in French.