Charter: PSI Education Support and Cultural Workers’ Network

1. The affiliates of Public Services International (PSI) represent hundreds of thousands of educational support and cultural workers (ESCW) throughout the world, many of whom work without job security, fair compensation and benefits, or recognition that their services are vital to ensuring high quality public education. The jobs of these workers are on the frontlines of the privatization and casualization struggle within the education sector, and many of these workers face challenges in pursuing their basic freedom to form a union and collectively bargain their terms and conditions of employment.

2. The PSI ESCW Network is established to confront the challenges that these workers face throughout the world and in accordance with Resolution #33, approved at the PSI World Congress in Durban, South Africa in December of 2012.

3. The primary objectives of the ESCW Network are to:

• Provide assistance to PSI affiliates who represent education support workers in organizing the sector and building collective bargaining capacity to effectively negotiate;
• Defend and advocate for affiliates who represent ESCW, to exercise their trade union rights to obtain decent work and living wages;
• Support research and collection of data and information to identify multinational corporations that seek to benefit from the privatization of education support services and explore the viability of coordinated campaigns to organize the workers in such corporations;
• Counter political attacks on public sector employees and their unions;
• Work with and actively pursue cooperation with other global union federations, pan-national and regional labor organizations, to advance the objectives of the ESCW Network.  

4. The ESCW Network is opened to all PSI affiliates that represent educational support and cultural workers and who have expressed an interest in participating in the ESCW Network.

5. The ESCW Network operates at the direction of the PSI HO, under the auspices of the Network’s Coordinating Committee and reports to the PSI Executive Board. The Network’s Coordinating Committee is nominated by the PSI General Secretary and appointed by the PSI Executive Board. The Coordinating Committee is comprised of ten (10) members, including at least two (2) representative affiliates in each region: Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. The term of The Coordinating Committee is consistent with the period between World Congresses. 

6. The ESCW Network Coordinating Committee is responsible for adopting and implementing a plan of action that achieves the ESCW Network’s objectives identified in Section 3 of this Charter.