Across Asia and the Pacific, PSI affiliates are increasingly treating tax justice as core trade union work. Decent work and quality public services depend on public revenue. Through regional coordination and capacity building efforts, unions are challenging a rigged tax system that lets multinational corporations and the wealthy underpay, while governments turn to austerity, user fees, and privatisation.  

From a “technical” issue to a mass workers’ issue 

A central strategy has been to popularise tax justice—taking it out of elite policy circles and into workplaces, union education, and bargaining agendas. As V Narasimhan, President of All India National Life Insurance Employees Federation, explains: 

“Earlier, tax justice was thought to be a matter of the elites. We have tried to change this attitude. Tax structure should not be understood only by those who regulate it, but also by those who pay it, which means the workers. So, we simplified the content and did capacity building.” 

This has helped shift the conversation toward progressive taxation, social security, and funding for public services. These efforts helped make tax justice and resource mobilisation a central demand during the 2024 pre-budget consultations of India’s ten Central Trade Unions with the government. The CTU’s linked progressive taxation to jobs, social protection, and public investment. The document submitted to the government said:  

“The resource mobilisation (for quality public services) has to be done by increasing the corporate tax, wealth tax and introducing inheritance tax instead of burdening common masses with the GST on essential food items and medicine. Over the decades, corporate tax rates have been slashed down unjustly and at the same time increasing indirect tax burden on common people resulted in an utterly regressive tax structure. That must be corrected in the interests of fairness, equity and propriety.” 

It emphasised on imposing inheritance tax on the super- rich to generate revenue. 

Their proposals—from progressive tax reforms to expanding social security—reflect a growing labour consensus: if governments claim there is “no money” for wages, pensions, healthcare, and education, unions will ask who is being allowed to dodge the bill. 

Australia wins CBCR  

In Australia, PSI affiliates helped secure a significant step forward: Public Country-by-Country reporting, a corporate transparency measure designed to expose tax haven use and profit shifting. In this fight, Australian Services Union (ASU), Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), New South Wales Nurses and Midwives’ Association (NSWNMA) and other affiliates worked tirelessly alongside broader civil society, to push tax transparency into law and defend it against corporate backlash.  

The law was finally passed in late 2024. 

Organising across the region 

This work is not limited to Australia and India. A. number of Asia Pacific unions are a part of Global Alliance for Tax Justice as well as PSI led Network of Unions for Tax Justice. They bring unions together to shape tax reform at global, regional, and national levels.  

Affiliates such as Public Services Labor Independent Confederation (PSLINK) in the Philippines and Maldives Professional Health Workers Union (MPHU) are working towards tax justice in their countries. They are making a simple point — tax justice is workers’ justice. When corporations and the wealthy underpay, governments cut services, outsource jobs, and shift costs onto ordinary people. When unions win transparency and progressive reforms, they strengthen the material foundation for what workers fight for every day — decent work and quality public services.