July 2, 2022

Public Services International

UNION WIN: Federal government to support IP waiver for COVID vaccines 

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After months of campaigning from union and advocacy organisations – including the NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association – Federal Trade Minister Dan Tehan has finally announced that the federal government will support an international push to waive intellectual property (IP) protections for COVID-19 vaccines. 

The federal government has finally supported a push for the waiver, which has been led by third world countries such as India and China, who have struggled to provide adequate vaccines to their populations due to the costs associated with IP protections. 

The Biden administration in the United States had previously indicated its support for the waiver, however the Australian government had been non-committal on the topic until today. 

It is hoped that the IP waivers will assist with the international COVID-19 vaccine rollout. 

Minister Tehan said that his government would “do everything [they] can to expand the production of vaccines globally because we need everyone across the globe to get access to a vaccine, ultimately, to be able to be safe”. 

Michael Whaites, Manager of Public Health Organising at the NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association has welcomed the government’s announcement. 

“Whilst rich countries are contemplating their 3rd dose, many healthcare workers in developing nations have a long wait for their first.  The current approach to mass distribution is inadequate so we must see the release of the patent,” Whaites said.   

“Our global safety must come before the profits of a small number of pharmaceutical companies.  We welcome the Trade Minister’s statements that will see Australia standing up for the human right to healthcare which in this case means equitable access to safe and effective vaccines as soon as possible. 

“None of us are safe until we are all safe”. 

The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association wishes to thank our campaign partners Public Services International, Australian Council of Trade Unions, Union Aid Abroad – APHEDA, and the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network for their contributions to this win. 

Trade unions unite to call for investment in care 

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Unions around the world are coming together in a show of strength to call on governments to invest in health and caring industries. 

Led by the International Trade Union Confederation, in association with Public Services International, unions representing workers in health, education and aged care are embarking on a Global Day of Action on 29 October with the rally call of “Invest in Care, NOW!” 

Organisers have said that “The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the devastating effects of decades of under-investment in public health and care systems and the harmful politics of austerity”. 

“The pandemic has underlined the centrality of health and care to our well-being and existence. The need for adequate investment in equitable, quality public health and care systems is more apparent and urgent than ever”. 

The coalition’s demands include investment in quality public healthcare services, more green jobs within so-called caring sectors, and for improved pay and conditions. 

The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association is proud to be part of both the International Trade Union Confederation and Public Services International. To be part of our campaign for quality health services, join us today. 

 

“COVID has illustrated the overwhelming importance of public services”

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COVID-19 has confirmed that well-resourced public health systems are the best defence against any public health crisis, Public Services International‘s Rosa Pavanelli writes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated, more than ever, the overwhelming importance of public services and the devastating consequences of under-funding and privatising public services.

The workers who deliver public services: healthcare workers, child, disability and elderly care workers, workers who make sure we have access to energy, to water and sanitation, emergency service workers, teachers and workers supporting public education, waste sector workers and workers who keep local, provincial and federal government services and administration working, are calling on governments to commit to COVID Recovery Plans that deliver a new era of public services for all.

Governments are now seeking to stimulate economic activity. They can and must take the opportunity to leave a lasting legacy for future generations and facilitate the largest delivery of public goods in a lifetime.

COVID-19 has confirmed that well-resourced public health systems are the best defence against any public health crisis. Similarly, well-resourced public services are the best defence against economic and social crises. Countries that have invested in quality public services will weather this crisis, and any future crisis, far better than those who have embraced the corrosive ideology of neoliberalism.

Many governments are now lifting restrictions and seeking to stimulate economic activity. They can and must take the opportunity to leave a lasting legacy for future generations and facilitate the largest delivery of public goods in a lifetime.

COVID-19 Recovery Plans must reorganise our societies around the capacity to care for all people and the environments we depend on, and to eliminate gender, wealth and social inequalities. Recoveries following previous crises – like the Great Depression and the Second World War – demonstrate that with political will, it is possible to secure a vast array of new public goods and services.

We can recover and inoculate ourselves against future crisis by building new public health infrastructure, health training and research, new universities, new public broadcasters and data systems, new public clean, renewable energy, new public spaces and guaranteed universal social protection.

What we cannot afford is to go back to the broken ‘business as usual’. We cannot accept the enticing discourse that is emerging in global circles, where corporates are not only promising a prosperous future for all – after having been bailed out by governments during the emergency – but also demanding even more power to define the rules of the new order.

The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association is proudly affiliated with Public Services International.

The COVID-19 recovery must not come at expense of workers

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Public Services International says that the COVID-19 recovery must not come at the expense of public services and workers.

While public service workers are giving it all to save lives, public spending is saving our entire global economic system from collapse: rescuing jobs, supporting salaries and bailing out many businesses on the brink.

Although this essential spending is being made by our governments today, the debate over how to deal with the debt generated by the COVID crisis will be of vital importance to unions and workers in the decade ahead.

We must do all we can to avoid the mistakes of the 2008 economic crisis: after governments took on billions in dodgy private sector debt, major corporations gouged on tax cuts, bail-outs and buy backs while workers faced frozen wages, foreclosures and austerity guttered our public sector. We must avoid the catastrophe that the international finance institutions forced on Greece: destroying peoples lives as well as all hope of economic recovery with a blind devotion to discredited austerity.

The current crisis exposes the urgent need to rebuild a strong and resilient public sector. Our public services, which have born a huge burden through spending cuts and the pandemic, must be bolstered through expansive increases in funding and support.

Meanwhile, with the ILO estimating up to 195 million COVID-related job losses, we must extend social security programs to ensure no one is left behind, and limit the justified anger and alienation which has helped fuel the far-right.

Paying for these programs will require more than just debt– to raise public revenues, the major companies who cashed in big since 2008 must be made to pay their fair share through a reformed global tax system. Making multinationals and the mega-rich contribute to the cost of crisis and recovery should be a key goal for our movement. The tech companies who made billions from dodging their taxes and skimping on the rights of their workers and are now cashing in big from the lock down must be top of the list. Wealth taxes to ensure those who have profited from the global economy in the last 20 years pay their fair share are now urgent.

After decades of deregulation, corruption, privatisation and tax-cuts for mega rich corporations, many countries- especially those in the developing world – were already struggling with debt before the Coronavirus outbreak. According to the IMF, 34 countries were already at risk of debt distress or in default in 2019. The international community must intervene to financially support these countries who cannot currently increase their expenditure without incurring even more unsustainable debt.

Some steps in this direction have already been taken:

  • the IMF and the World Bank are providing loans to more than 100 countries to tackle the crisis.
  • the IMF has approved debt service cancellation for 25 countries for six months
  • the G20 has announced a suspension of debt principal and interest payments for the poorest developing countries until the end of the year

However, these measures are neither sustainable nor effective solutions to the deeper questions of developing world debt. Instead, we must support calls for a debt jubilee: a cancellation of odious and unsustainable debt and the cancellation of all external debt payments due in 2020 and 2021. This must cover all external creditors, both official and private, and all low-income countries. In addition, we must support emergency financing for developing countries in the form of grants rather than loans.

In the long term, unions should support a systemic change to global debt governance. We must stop putting the needs of creditors ahead of those of people. All analysis of debt repayment must place the realisation of human rights as its key priority. We should support calls for debt workout mechanism which should guarantee transparency, independence from debtors and creditors as well as inclusive participation of all stakeholders instead of the ad hoc and opaque procedures which currently exist.

We can not return to the broken and unsustainable business as usual which governed debt and tax before this latest crisis. Workers and users of public services must no longer be made to bear the brunt of debt restructuring. Now more than ever, unions must be prepared to fight for a fairer global debt system and ensure the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share.

Daniel Bertossa is the Assistant General Secretary of Public Services International, and Virginia Palomba is a Policy and Project Assistant

Public Services International has prepared a series of Briefs of Debt and Workers to help unionists understand these issues and build strategies for a new system Read them online here along with a Special Brief on Debt and Covid.

Fiji targets nurses in crackdown on unions  

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Nurse leader detained, office raided ahead of protest over sackings and privatisation.

The General Secretary of the Fiji Nursing Association, Salanieta Matiavi, was among dozens of people arrested in Fiji during a recent crackdown on union activity.

Salanieta, who is in her 60s, was taken by police for questioning on April 30 and locked in a cell for 48 hours. She was not charged with any offence.

Also detained for up to 48 hours were the head of the Fijian Teachers’ Association, an official of Fiji’s National Union of Workers and the national secretary of Fiji’s Trade Union congress, Felix Anthony.

Anthony was arrested while he was meeting with the Minister of Employment, Productivity and Industrial Relations, the CEO of the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation, an official of the International Labor Organisation and others.

Police also ordered 13 Teachers’ Association officials to report to the nearest police station for questioning. They were held for four hours and released.

NSWNMA Assistant General Secretary, Judith Kiejda, who was in Fiji at the time, said police raided the Fiji Nursing Association office and took away files during Salanieta’s detention.

“It seems Salanieta was arrested and locked up as part of an attempt to intimidate union members who planned to hold a rally and march in the city of Nadi,” Judith said.

The march, which was called off, would have coincided with the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Nadi from 1-5 May.

Judith said it appeared the government was attacking union members to show the ADB it would not tolerate protests against ADB projects.

An agenda of privatisation

The ADB loans money to poor countries in the Asia Pacific region on condition they carry out public sector “reform”. That usually means privatisation of public assets and consequent job losses.

Fiji has privatised its electricity and water systems and is looking at contracting out three hospitals through so-called “public private partnerships”.

During the arrests, several Australian and New Zealand union officials were in Nadi to attend a meeting of the global union body Public Services International (PSI). The group included NSWNMA organiser Michael Whaites, the PSI’s Oceania sub-regional secretary and Judith, a PSI board member.

Judith described the Fijian nurses as “vocal and brave. They seemed to be more worried about us getting arrested or deported than their own situation.” A delegation of Australian and New Zealand trade unionists was refused entry to Fiji and deported in 2011.

Before Salanieta and other union leaders were arrested, the Fiji Water Authority made more than 2,000 workers redundant.

According to media reports, the Water Authority workers turned up for work on May 1 only to find armed police at the gates threatening them with arrest if they tried to enter or assemble at the gates.

Twenty-nine water workers who gathered on union property were arrested, detained for 48 hours and charged with unlawful assembly under the Public Order (Amendment) Act 2012, which dates back to the former military dictatorship.

A PSI statement said a water project funded by the ADB had been contracted to a Chinese company that was likely to bring in Chinese workers to replace the laid-off local workforce.

The PSI said the ADB had an obligation to ensure human rights including trade union rights were respected at ADB-financed projects.

Global commitment to public health care

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International conference agrees on central role of public system and need to invest in health care workforce.

Governments should not offload their responsibility for delivering health care to private operators. And public spending on the health care workforce should be seen as an investment rather than a cost.

These were the key messages endorsed by governments, unions and employers at an international conference on ways to improve employment and working conditions in health services.

Held by the International Labor Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland, it was the first tripartite meeting of its type in almost 20 years.

Assistant General Secretary Judith Kiejda said it was an honour for the NSWNMA to be invited as one of only eight delegates representing unions that cover about 10 million health workers.

Other union representatives came from France, Germany, Korea, South Africa, the USA and Argentina.

They were matched by eight employer delegates – including an Australian – and representatives of 53 governments. The Australian government was invited but did not attend.

Judith said the NSWNMA was invited partly in recognition of its work with the global union federation Public Services International (PSI).

Judith has been the PSI’s Asia Pacific health coordinator since 2010 while NSWNMA staffer Michael Whaites is the PSI’s sub-regional secretary for Oceania.

“The invitation also reflects the fact that Australia is the only regional country to have won mandated ratios or staffing levels in a number of models across various states,” Judith said.

“The language of most government speakers was very helpful and in most discussions were very close to the worker perspectives.

“Importantly, all three parties agreed that mandated staffing is the only way to guarantee decent working conditions in health services.

“As the Brazilian government representative said, delivering safe and quality health care will be difficult without the right numbers of staff with the right skills in the right place at the right time.

“The conference recognised that quality health care is a human right and its decisions can now be used when lobbying governments in Australia on issues of staffing and maintaining quality public health services.

“The conference decisions will be particularly useful in our discussions with future governments which might be more in tune with our thinking on health matters than some current governments.”

Judith said employer representatives spoke in favour of public private partnerships (PPPs) but unions successfully argued against tripartite support for PPPs.

“We all acknowledged there were private systems in every country that complemented the public system but we shouldn’t be handing over public services to private operators.”

PSI General Secretary Rosa Pavanelli told the conference there was “a rich evidence base” for concluding that PPPs simply amount to the subsidising of private interests with public funds.

“While private investments cannot be discountenanced, these have to be adequately regulated and should not be passed off as being in partnership with public health, which is the mainstay of universal access to health care,” she said.

Judith said the NSWNMA would work to organise a similar tripartite meeting on health workforce issues to be attended by Asia-Pacific countries including Australia.

“Through the PSI we are establishing a strong network of Asia-Pacific health unions. We have the same issues everywhere – not enough staff, inappropriate skills, and governments seeking to privatise services.” ■