Global Day of Action on Care

PSI is campaigning and organising for well-funded quality public care systems provided by well-trained, paid and supported staff.

This 29 October, we urge you to take action in your country, as part of the Global Day of Action on Care by calling on your governments to invest in care and ensure decent work for millions of care workers. 

Care workers are facing exploitation, precarious contracts and are forced to survive on poverty wages. The cost-of-living crisis is making things even harder for many care workers. Workers need significant wage increases right now to match the rising costs of food and energy bills.

Care workers have had enough, a vicious cycle of understaffing, and deterioration of conditions is forcing thousands with no other choice but to leave the sector. By failing to improve the pay, terms and conditions of care workers, employers will only further worsen the workforce crisis and make it harder for existing staff to deliver quality care to service users.

PSI supports care workers to ensure they are valued and have what they need to provide quality affordable care that users need. PSI will continue working directly with our affiliates within care to build worker power to secure collective bargaining, expand trade union rights and decent working conditions, to influence local, regional and national governments and expand union membership.

What you can do

Send a letter to your relevant government representatives urging them to to take immediate action by investing in care and ensure decent work for care workers. Download the model letter (Word).

View the model letter

Dear Minister/ Assembly Member/ Mayor/ Councillor/ etc

Decent Work in Care Services

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed how decades of under-investment in our health and care system has severely impacted the quality, accessibility, and safety of health and care services which rely on low-paid and precarious care work. The pandemic has also deepened pre-existing national and global structural inequalities across gender, class and, in many cases, racial and ethnic lines. Governments must adequately fund public social care and protect the workers who deliver care services.

Millions of workers continue to deliver health and social care services under increasingly challenging circumstances and the spiralling cost of living.  Our members in care experience long hours, poor working conditions, low wages and insecure contracts. Years into the pandemic and many still lack access to health and safety protections such as personal protective equipment. Care workers are physically and emotionally exhausted and as a result, are forced to miss work due to the stress and trauma.

Our care system is underfunded and under-resourced. Our members now have to care for more people with fewer resources. However, care needs will only continue to grow as our society does. Our members urge you to undertake an immediate review to ensure that there are enough staff to meet the growing demand for care. Without a workforce plan for the care sector, the care needs of service users will go unmet and the burden on workers will grow.

Care is an essential service and our members believe it is too important not to invest in it properly. Quality of care relies on well-paid, trained and supported workforce. A new model of care is urgently needed which prioritizes the workers caring for people. 

This is why we are writing to you today. Our members urge you to take immediate action by investing in care and ensure decent work for care workers in (name of the country) by:

  • Invest in universal, quality public health and care – including mental health, childcare, early childhood education, elderly care and other social care services - to ensure the creation of millions of jobs with decent work which includes fair wages, and humane working conditions; and to close gender gaps in labour force participation 

  • Ensure adequate wages and improvement in working conditions, including equal pay for work of equal value, training opportunities and occupational health and safety for workers in health, care and education, including home care and domestic workers 

  • Ensure equity and non-discrimination in recruitment, retention, access to training and promotion opportunities for workers across the health and care sectors 

  • Ensure that the rights to freedom of association and to collective bargaining are respected for all workers in the health and care sectors, whether in the formal or informal economy, as well as their representation in the decision-making process.  

  • Fund universal, gender-responsive social protection accessible by all workers regardless of employment status or migrant status, racial or ethnic background, disability, gender, identity expression or sexual orientation, and inclusive of workers in the informal economy.

  • Ensure accessibility for all to quality public health and care services, including refugees and migrants, regardless of status. 

  • Shift from the "care economy" approach which has contributed to the commodification of care to "rebuilding the social organisation of care" where care needs and care work are not simply considered as economic issues but as human rights, which governments are dutybound to provide and safeguard. 

There is an urgent need for adequate public investment to achieve universal quality public health and care, as well as, to rebuild the social organisation of care, integrating the recognition of the human right to care, and ensuring social care services are provided as a fundamental human right, and public good which is universally accessible.  

We very much count on you to ensure access to quality public care for all, and Decent Work for care workers.  

Yours sincerely, 

Download the Word version.

The Crisis in Care: PSI's response

Across the world, care workers are facing exploitation, precarious contracts and are forced to survive on poverty wages.
Why? Because our systems of care are fundamentally unbalanced, unequal and ultimately unsustainable. And now the cost of living crisis is making things even harder.

We need a new model of care which enables workers to provide quality care. That’s why at Public Services International we are organising with unions across the world to get precarity and profit out of the care sector.

Watch and share the video below.

Video

Global Day for Action on Care - PSI Message

Reforms to Aged Care Sector 

PSI affiliates in Australia have long been campaigning and organising for much-needed reforms to the Aged Care sector which is overstretched and under-resourced.

This week saw the Australian Government pass new legislation requiring a registered nurse to be at all facilities 24/7, mandating minimum care staffing minutes and transparency and accountability on public funding. All demands pushed for by unions representing workers within the aged care sector. Shaye Candish, General Secretary from New South Wales Nursing and Midwifery Association- a PSI affiliate-  spoke at our recent webinar series on the crisis within Long Term Care. Watch the video below and hear directly from Shaye on how union action led to the Australian Government committing to reforming the Aged Care sector

Video

Shaye Candish, General Secretary from New South Wales Nursing and Midwifery Association- a PSI affiliate - spoke at our recent webinar series on the crisis within long term care.

Union Action in long-term care: Shaye Candish (NSWNMA)

Advocacy Guide

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). This Advocacy Guide and accompanying Activity Workbook, launched today, aim to assist trade unions and women workers around the world to make our 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.

Browse online and download the Rebuilding the Social Organisation of Care Advocacy guide and related activites workbook. 

Browse online or download a PDF of the advocacy guide

More information

Find out more on our webpage or contact our Social care organiser Huma Haq.

Care

Too often workers in the care sector are undervalued, underpaid and overworked, and unable to do their job. Through supporting our affiliates to organise and improve frontline conditions, we can build a more caring society.

Find out more