India

PSI represents first responders and frontline workers. These are the people who put their lives at risk in order to protect and save your families. First responders include firefighters and emergency medical technicians, police and other uniformed services. They are also the frontline workers in hospitals and health clinics, in schools, in energy and water utilities; in public transport; in civil administration and in a range of other areas. All of us depend on these people being able to do their jobs, having the right tools and training.

Deaths to health workers accounted for six percent of all deaths confirmed as due to EVD, even to the end of the outbreaks. Over 500 health workers, including members of PSI affiliated unions, were killed in the line of duty. PSI is actively lobbying national governments, the ILO and WHO and working with health and allied care workers in our unions to rebuild health systems that can resist future outbreaks in the context of universal access to essential healthcare, which is the core of the post-2015 agenda for health.

International trade agreements such as the TPP are currently being fast-tracked and negotiated in secrecy. These agreements undermine local and national government decision-making power and increase corporate access to public services resulting in the privatization of critical public services. PSI is working with global union federations, affiliated unions, and civil society allies who oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) being negotiated in the Asia Pacific Region.

PSI is currently undertaking further research on the effects of the TISA on our sectors. PSI will be working with civil society and other allies to oppose the harmful effects of the TISA.

Today, as much as 80 per cent of the global population does not have access to social protection and lives in social insecurity, facing complete loss of income when a personal or national economic crisis strikes. Social Protection was pushed to the fore of the international agenda after the obvious damage due to the financial and economic crises, and a 2012 ILO Recommendation operationalizes Social Protection Floors as two-pronged, providing universal access to essential health care and basic income security in the case of maternity, for children and when people are sick, unemployed, disabled, and old. Read more>>>