Congress Resolution 33: Education support workers

RESOLUTION No. 33) EDUCATION SUPPORT WORKERS

The 29^th World Congress of Public Services International (PSI),
meeting in Durban, South Africa, on 27-30 November 2012

WHEREAS       PSI represents workers in thousands of different job categories and promotes recognition and voice for all those who provide public services. At the same time, however, PSI recognizes that there is great benefit to bringing together across borders people who do similar work so that they can share more specific experiences and strategies. For this reason, PSI has established working groups in the sectors of energy, essential services, health, public administration, and water and sanitation.

WHEREAS       PSI also represents a large and growing number of support workers in the education sector. These members have a broad range of job titles, including office employees, custodians, maintenance workers, bus drivers, instructional paraprofessionals, food service workers, school nurses and health aides, nursery workers, technicians, groundskeepers, secretaries, bookkeepers, mechanics, special education assistants and hundreds more.

 WHEREAS       education support workers provide essential services from the early childhood level straight through to university. However, their contributions often go unrecognized, and that lack of respect manifests itself all too frequently in poor pay and working conditions and inadequate training. Many education support workers are forced to accept part-time or precarious positions without job security.

WHEREAS       education authorities around the world have demonstrated an alarming propensity to privatize education support work. Many of the companies receiving private contracts to do that public work are multinational in scope and have a history of attacking the pay, terms and conditions of workers and the unions that represent them. PSI believes that education is best delivered as a public service.

Therefore, Congress RESOLVES that PSI:

• Survey its membership to determine which affiliates represent workers in the education sector and better understand what types of work they do;
• Facilitate networking and communication among relevant affiliates on matters of concern to education support workers;
• Support research to identify multinational corporations that seek to benefit from the privatization of education support services and explore the viability of coordinated campaigns to organise the workers in such corporations;
• Assert the right of all education support workers to form or join a union and to bargain collectively their terms and conditions of service;
• Support the work of affiliates to organise and mobilise education support workers; and
• Work with other global union federations and international bodies to lift up the voices of education support workers, improve their wages and working conditions, and highlight their contributions to the delivery of quality public services.

See all Congress resolutions including the Program of Action and the Constitution.