As the world is still navigating a devastating health and socioeconomic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of workers in health, care and early childhood education – the majority of whom are women, and often from racialised and migrant communities – continue to provide essential services under the most challenging of circumstances.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed how decades of underinvestment in public health and care systems have severely affected the quality, accessibility, and safety of health and care services.
The pandemic has also deepened pre-existing national and global structural inequalities across gender, class and, in many cases, racial and ethnic lines.
There is an urgent need for adequate investment in universal, equitable, quality, public and gender transformative health and care systems for:
- the creation of decent jobs for women and men in the care sector, including access to vocational and lifelong learning;
- improving pay and working conditions for workers in health, care and education;
- ensuring availability and accessibility by all to quality public health, care and education services;
- stimulating sustainable economic and jobs growth; and
- realising gender equality policies and programmes.
On 29 October, workers, their unions and civil society allies around the world will take action to demand investments and decent work in care!
The annual Global Action Day on 29 October is a joint initiative of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Public Services International (PSI), UNI Global Union, Education International (EI), International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) and Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO).
