This series of webinars sets out the structural problems in long term care, how governments have responded and what unions are doing. It will examine how users and workers cannot make the needed changes while the industry model is based on financialisation, extraction and exploitation.
This series of three webinars sets out the structural problems in long term care, how governments have responded and what unions are doing. It will examine how users and workers cannot make the needed changes while the industry model is based on financialisation, extraction and exploitation.
The three webinars:
10 May 15:00 – 16:30 CET
Profiting from Care: Structural problems in long term care31 May 15:00 – 16:30 CET
Government Responses to the Care Crisis21 June 15:00 – 16:30 CET
Union Responses to the Care Crisis
Interpretation in English, French, Spanish, Arabic and German.
Register HERE | Check out our Care Manifesto HERE.
Background
COVID has exposed the scandalous state of long-term care across the world. Thousands of preventable deaths in the richest countries brutally exposed the failures of our current models. But these deep flaws have not been created by COVID. Rather they are the result of decades of deliberate underfunding, deregulation, and privatised care. This model has been built not on quality care but on exploitation of the largely female, and often migrant, workforce, short term financialization and by supressing evidence of tragic neglect of the most vulnerable in our community.
Providing long care term to the most vulnerable in our community requires skill, time, dedication, and dignity. Care workers and their unions have long argued that care for the most vulnerable is undermined by profit extraction. Raising quality and ensuring workplace gains will not be possible without fundamental reform to drive profit out of care. The COVID crisis has demonstrated that we need to rebuild the social organisation of care, starting with a revaluing of care work and reclaiming care as a public good.
In the first webinar (May 10), PSI will launch two new pieces of research:
Long Term Care: Effects of Private Provision – outcomes for patients, workers, the community
Care Givers and Takers - A Workers guide to Financialisation in the care sector
The webinar series is open to unions, workers and anybody who wants to know more about how we can fight for the human right to care and better care outcomes for care users and workers.
Supporting documents will be forwarded to registered participants. These webinars are hosted by Public Services International (PSI) the global union federation that covers care in public and private sectors on all continents.
Registration for all three webinars is via this same link:
Webinar One - Profiting from Care: Structural problems in long term care
May 10 (15:00 – 16:30 CET)
Our societies and economies cannot function without the provision of care. Yet COVID has shown that decades of corporate lobbying have created weak and failing long term care (LTC) systems in most countries. LTC systems now rely on exploitative and extractive financialised models that undervalue and underpay care work, promotes precarity and exploits the feminised and often migrant workforce. In this seminar PSI will launch research that explains how privatisation and financialisation of LTC creates these problems, how corporate interests have profited and how workers and users will continue to suffer until profit is driven out of care. We will also launch a workers guide to financialisation and present realistic alternative principles to rebuild the social basis for care based on a human right to care, rather than profit, and what this means for workers.
Speakers
Rosa Pavanelli, PSI General Secretary - Report Launch: Long Term Care: Effects of Private Provision – outcomes for patients, workers, the community
Nick Shaxson, Financial Journalist, Author (Treasure Islands, Finance Curse) - Report Launch: Care Givers and Takers - A Workers guide to Financialisation in the care sector
Victor Castanet, Author of “The GraveDiggers” - The impact on workers: The ORPEA case
Corina Rodriguez – Economist, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina - Care as a public good – PSI's Manifesto
Moderated by Daniel Bertossa, PSI Assistant General Secretary
Webinar two - Government Responses to the Long Term Care Crisis
May 31 (15:00 – 16:30 CET)
After decades of neglect, the failures of privatised care have burst into the public debate. Workers, users, unions and providers of unpaid care are building political power. After years of being exploited and marginalised they are demanding change. This webinar explores government responses to the Long-Term Care (LTC) crisis across the globe and asks whether governments are making the necessary fundamental reforms - or just excuses. We look at where workers have had wins, where governments are deflecting from the real issues, and the role of corporations in shaping narratives and outcomes. We will ask whether these responses meet our demands for the rebuilding of the social basis for LTC, removing profit from care, revaluing care work, raising the quality of care and respecting and rewarding care workers.
Speakers
Gavin Edwards, Senior National Officer for Social Care, UNISON, UK
Emily Suvaal, Campaign Lead for Aged Care, New South Wales Nursing and Midwifery Association, Australia
Selma Nuñez Parada, FENPRUSS, Chile
Moderated by Huma Haq, PSI Care Organiser
Webinar Three - Union Responses to the Care Crisis
21 June 15:00 – 16:30 CET
COVID has exposed the failings of long term care (LTC) and raised the visibility of the essential workers who provide it. In many countries these workers have been applauded and called heroes. Yet when the clapping stops there are no guarantees that anything will change. Without fundamental reform to LTC systems to drive profit out, workplace wins will be harder. Turning the moment into the political and workplace power needed for change requires that workers be unionised, organised and active. This session will look at how unions have responded to the crisis, built power for change and what they have learned.
Speakers
Nan McFadgen, President CUPE Nova Scotia and CUPE National Executive Board member, Canada
Irene Álvarez, Responsible for Occupational Health, Environment and Socio-sanitary Sectors, CCOO, Spain
Anna Torriente, ILO
Jason Ward, CICTAR
Shaye Candish, Assistant General Secretary, New South Wales Nursing and Midwifery Association, Australia
Moderated by Huma Haq, PSI Care Organiser