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A Guide to the Issues

In this simple guide we introduce you to the issues affecting public sector development today. The links take you to more in-depth analysis.

Background
The public sector is difficult to define globally. It differs from country to country. The PSI defines the public sector as including workers employed in national, regional and local government; undertakings engaged in the production and supply of gas, electricity and water; waste removal, processing and recycling services; health, environmental and social services; non-teaching educational, cultural and recreational services; construction and maintenance of roads and buildings; and other bodies whose function is to provide services to the public. The health services and public utilities pages on this website deal with some of these separately but most of our 20 million members work in the other areas. They provide public services whether or not their employer is the state, an NGO, a government-owned agency or a large multinational.

Reform
The public sector must be constantly improved and made relevant for today if it is to play its full social and economic role. Some issues affecting the modernisation process can cause avoidable problems. Click here for more information on Public Sector Reform.

Too often, those promoting change forget that social dialogue is an essential way of getting workers and their unions to contribute their unique knowledge and their commitment to the process.

Globalisation
Globalisation can be positive or negative for workers and their communities: it all depends on the rules underlying the processes. PSI has published much on our vision and strategies for dealing with privatisation. It affects all public service workers.

Public procurement
There is a difference between governments buying pens and paper from the private sector and ‘buying’ their workforce from the private sector. Governments also have a valuable role in local economies by buying from local suppliers or employing local people. Many governments – local and national – are under pressure to open all of their procurement to the private sector, including foreign multinational companies. To find out more about this, look at PSI’s views.

Demographics
As our societies age, the services we need change - less child-care and more elderly care. As more women enter the paid workforce, they need services to help this happen and services they used to provide for free need to be provide. Migration changes what and how we offer services. These same changes are going on inside the public service workforce as well. Huge numbers of public service workers will retire in the next ten years. PSI has clear views on the implications.

Pay and conditions
For Public Service wokers, wage and work conditions tend to be specific to each country. However, most of our members are bargaining with a global multinational company. However, there are common issues: pay equity, where women are paid equally with men for work of equal value; performance pay, where a person’s pay is determined by the individual achievement of pre-set targets or objectives; rights to collective bargaining, the pressure from international financial institutions (such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) to downsize the public service and its wage bill. PSI also provides urgent action support for unions in difficult wage struggles.

Partnership approaches
‘Partnership’ is trendy. It can include partnership agreements between a union and its government/employer; or Public-Public partnerships where public sector operations in one country/state/municipality/utility work together to improve performance. But it can also include so-called Public-Private Partnerships (PPP or PFIs), - see above - which PSI regards as much more dangerous.

Union density
In most countries (or democratic countries), public sector workers are much more organised into unions than are other workers. The countries with the strongest membership tend to be the ones with the best wages and conditions, the best public services and the best performance on overseas development aid. PSI has some clear ideas about Organising Public Sector Workers.

Links

Building trade unionism in an epoch of reform presents us with new challenges. Here's some of the research which we and our affiliates have done.

Prisons, libraries, science, cleaning services... in this section we look at some of the specific services which make up the public sector.

A collection of in-depth stories relating to public sector reform around the world: some successes; some failures; some solutions and some lessons to be learned.

This group is the PSI's main policy-setting and campaign oversight body for work on public services; the Quality Public Services campaign; public utilities; the international finance institutions; the World Trade Organisation and the OECD.

GATS, TRIPS, IFI's, IMF, OECD... what ARE these things, and how do they affect the delivery of services in the public sector?

Get involved!

If you would like to be "in the loop" regarding some of the issues we have discussed on this page, why not join one of the PSI's Public Sector email lists? Just fill out this form.

Email Lists
PSI Public Sector list This list is for people who are interested in the work of the PSI Public Sector Working Group. People who are not members of the Group are welcome. Anyone can send a message to the list but since we have only just established it, we are not sure how much traffic you will get if you join it. Once we see how it operates, we will also post some instructions about how to write messages in a way that makes it easy for people who do not read your language to get a rough automatic translation.
World Trade Organisation list This list is run by PSI's Svend Robinson and is open to anyone who wants to receive information on the WTO or general trade policy issues. Most of the information comes from a range of NGO networks. In that respect, PSI does not edit the material: we simply pass on to the list messages of general interest to trade policy people in the trade union movement. It is virtually all in English. On average, there are probably five or six messages a week but this number varies according to events or developments at the WTO or in other trade negotiations. At this stage, it is a circulation list only - all messages come from Mike Waghorne. We are exploring the possibility of making it a proper list serve so that anyone on the list can send messages to everyone else.
OECD list This list is open to anyone interested in OECD work. It is run by PSI's Svend Robinson and carries information on the OECD and the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) at the OECD. It is virtually all in English, with occasional messages in French - the only other OECD language. There are very few messages sent to this list and most are around the time of the annual Consultation between the OECD's Public Governance Committee and a delegation from TUAC and PSI, usually at the end of March each year. At this stage, it is a circulation list only - all messages come via Mike Waghorne. We are exploring the possibility of making it a proper list serve so that anyone on the list can send message to everyone else.

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