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Call to PSI affiliates to join the campaign for tax justice

24 May 2013
Rosa Pavanelli and demonstrators in Geneva
While PSI members and the people they serve are being forced to take cuts in jobs and public services, multinational corporations, financiers and the obscenely rich hide their piles of money in offshore tax havens. The governments we work for are handing ever more generous tax giveaways to banks, big business and the wealthy.
It’s deeply unfair. It shifts the burden away from those who already have the most and drops it on ordinary people. Unfair taxes create poverty and inequality as they relentlessly shift wealth to the elite 1%.

More and more people are seeing the damage caused by regressive taxes. Stagnant economies. Lost jobs. Sky-high youth unemployment. Deep cuts in public services. The result is a dramatic privatisation of services; associated corruption is often one of the major consequences which impacts public budgets, prices and tax policies.

It’s a world-wide trend. It requires a unified, coordinated response backed by positive solutions.

Public Services International invites all affiliates to join in the global campaign for tax justice. Many PSI affiliates are already taking action on this front. Now, major NGOs and progressive organizations are also on board, supporting our message that fair taxes are needed to fund the public services that can end poverty and inequality.

We all know that tax justice will not be achieved overnight – but momentum is building world-wide.

Members’ decisions through the  PSI World Congress (November 2012) and the recent Executive Board (16-17 May 2013) have confirmed the clear priority and mandate for PSI to work with affiliates in tax justice campaigns at local, national and international levels.

Now is the time to act.

Join with PSI in the growing global campaign for tax justice:

  • Follow the PSI Public Finance Control and Anti-Corruption Strategies forum 13 June at the International Labour Conference in Geneva
  • Work with PSI to co-organize a tax justice event in the third week of June, leading into 23 June 2013 World Public Services Day. Co-sponsor a public forum or a campaign strategy session on a specific tax justice issue (tax havens, anti-corruption, tax avoidance, Robin Hood Tax etc) in at least one country in different regions - Asia, Africa, MENA, North America, South America, Europe.
  • Get involved with the European Tax Justice Week being organised by EPSU and allies in the third week of June, with a special Day of Action on 19 June. EPSU’s important new study shows the costs to national economies with the loss of tens of thousands of public tax collector jobs cut under the pretext of austerity.
  • Join us in working with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) which is exposing millions of secretly-leaked tax haven records. Insights from former or current tax collection workers are very useful.
  • If your union is already working on a tax justice campaign, tell us so we can connect and promote your activities.
  • Share information with your members through your publications, websites and local meetings. Download some Talking points.
  • Seize media opportunities to emphasize the damage caused by unfair taxes, and to promote tax justice, and to press governments to act.


Please contact PSI in response to any of these points, and to find out more about how to get involved in the tax justice campaign now.

If we do not act now to win tax justice, the result will be more cuts in public services, more lost jobs, and more zeroes at the bargaining table. Please join this important campaign today. Together, working with our unions and growing list of allies, we can win.

Download the PDF of this call for action

Also see