ITF Press Release: World Public Services Day

June 22, 2012

Commenting on World Public Services Day, tomorrow, 23 June, ITF inland transport sections secretary Mac Urata said: “This is the day when quality public services are celebrated, especially by workers and their trade unions, who know what they deliver to citizens, and how investment in them creates jobs and growth.”

He continued: “From railways to libraries to health and all the other essential services, quality public services enrich the lives of all of us. Yet they are now facing an unprecedented threat.

“These services are faced with cuts, just at a time when they are needed most. Yet not only do they need this beneficial investment, but the means to do so is within government’s grasp – via a global financial transactions tax (FTT). This has the potential to raise the money needed to tackle inequality, poverty and climate change by investing it in quality public services.”

He concluded: “These public services are, potentially, about a better and fairer world.”

The ITF is one of the partners in the Council of Global Unions’ Quality Public Services – Action Now! Campaign (www.qpsactionnow.org), which supports decent public services and the FTT – the Robin Hood Tax. As part of that campaign the ITF and its affiliated trade unions are resisting cuts to services, promoting public transport, battling climate change and researching privatisation and multinational companies.

ENDS

The Council of Global Unions has issued a statement on World Public Services Day, which can be seen at www.qpsactionnow.org/news/our-challenge-world-public-services-day. For more on World Public Services Day and the Council of Global Unions’ campaign on quality public services, see www.un.org/en/events/publicserviceday and www.qpsactionnow.org