Honourable delegates, distinguished guests and fellow workers, 

This year’s ILC is held amidst multiple crises – that too often leave people feeling hopeless. 

Feeling that too many of the hard lessons of the past have been forgotten. 

Despite the clapping and promises made during the covid pandemic – today health workers face a serious Ebola outbreak – without adequate measures in place.  

In Ukraine, Gaza and now Lebanon, health, energy, water and emergency service workers face the horrendous danger of double and triple tap strikes in contravention of international law.  

Yet despite this Public Services workers’ daily actions are grounded in hope - and provide hope - to us all.  

Hope that has a human touch – that can never be replaced by automation, algorithms or AI.  

We welcome the DG report on Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Decent Work. 

But we must remember that this technology has been developed and expands — only with our labour and our data- often taken without compensation or permission. 

As Pope Leo warns, a “culture of power” is “infiltrating society”, “taking hold” of every aspect of our lives - from the workplace to the field of war. These tools cannot continue to be controlled by a handful of men –  enthralled to “a culture of power.”  

Our 30 million members – mostly women – build, maintain and care for the public infrastructure and social goods that allow society to flourish.  

We must now build the public digital infrastructure needed to ensure these new tools are governed in the public interest.  

Where the use of new data and tools violates ethics or human rights, public service workers must have the right — and the protection — to refuse to implement it, and to blow the whistle when needed. 

Where digital tools are appropriate, workers and unions must have a key role in shaping them. We must have a digital right of entry — so that unions, labour inspectorates, and worker representatives can inspect algorithmic management, audit risks, and ensure rights in the digital workplace. 

Our members are not against technology. We use it to save lives and serve communities.  

But we are against digitalisation being used to justify privatisation, austerity and union busting. We do oppose ceding monopolies to unaccountable corporations to extract our data and control vital government functions - or to increase and automate state surveillance.      

There is nothing ‘modern’ about removing the human face of public services — turning care visits into robocalls, using an algorithm to cut off support to vulnerable people, handing over public data to private corporations. This is not progress. It is hopelessness. 

And again – it is public service workers who are fighting back. 

Our members in Sweden have refused to use tech tools to report migrants seeking public services like healthcare.  

Our unions in the USA have won reinstatement for thousands of essential civil servants who tech billionaires tried to fire through the failed DOGE project. 

Or in South Korea, WHERE OUR UNIONS brought hundreds of thousands of people into the street to protect parliament and democracy and stop an attempted coup. 

We are pleased to see that hope is once again on the agenda at the ILO. The recent ICJ clarification on the right to strike means the ILO can finally get back to work.  

And PSI will play its part – in partnership with the ILO on occupational safety and health. Reversing the spread of precarious work. And encouraging governments to ratify convention 151, so public service workers cannot be arbitrarily denied the right to freedom of association. And we will fight to defend trade unionists attacked for exercising these rights.  

We will also continue to find common ground with government and public service employers to promote quality public services and decent work – such as the landmark Global Framework Agreement on Social Dialogue and Co-operation with United Cities and Local governments that will be signed shortly. 

Delegates, when faced with crisis, public service workers do not step back. 

But stepping forward should not mean stepping into needless danger – nor being underprepared. 

The ILO was founded on hope amidst the rubble of the First World War - AND in a world that too often feels like it is coming apart, our members nurture that hope – and put it into action - every day.  

Working people, acting in solidarity, to build a world worth living in - for us all. That is what hope looks like.