Speaking at the UNCSW68 parallel event Verónica Montúfar , PSI Equalities Officer, discusses the shift in approach towards care policies, moving from a focus solely on the care economy to a broader perspective encompassing the social organization of care.

What are the key principles to keep in mind when approaching discussions, advocacy, and organizing for care policies and legislation (at national, regional, and global levels)? What challenges do you anticipate, and what initiatives have your unions taken on the topic of care?

In 2020, PSI decided to change the course and the discourse on care and move from the approach focused only on the care economy to the social organisation of care, which allowed us to have a more comprehensive approach to care, integrating both the political and the ethical in our analysis.

This shift permitted us to build our Care Manifesto with global feminist, tax justice, and human rights movements in 2021, jointly calling for rebuilding the social organisation of care. The Manifesto refers to 5Rs beyond the world of work of the ILO 5R Framework for Care Work and places the discussion on care at the national, regional, and global political levels. Our 5Rs (recognise, reward, reduce, redistribute, and reclaim), include in addition the need to recognise care as a human right, the need to redistribute care between the households and public services, and the need to reclaim the public nature of care and the fundamental responsibility of States in the financing, providing and regulating of care systems and services. -

We see that we can proclaim victory in all these levels, including the global governance on 3Rs or from our position in at least part of the 3Rs (recognise, reduce, redistribute)

We need to fight more to reward care workers with decent work (ILO agenda) and to reclaim public care and the State’s full competence in regulating all actors of the social organisation of care, including the private sector.

Opportunities:

·         Advancing the need to reward care workers (ILO General Discussion this year)

Challenges:

·         Privatisation and financialization, considering care as a market asset, that pushes out women in vulnerable situations, using the tricks of the finance system and/or using the State as an instrument for increasing private profits by the externalization of care services. (Care economy, purple economy, silver economy)

·         Gender bonds and increasing the public deft.

·         Lack of unity in the trade union movement that is not allowing us to fight together.

United we win, divided we fall!