Public Services International The global union federation of workers in public services

The public sector is always called upon to maintain responsibility for risks, especially when things go wrong, while benefits and profits are privatised and taken out of the system. So-called profits that are unavailable to be reinvested in the public infrastructure and services upon privatization. We would like to take credit for these hundreds of cases of privatisation reversals, but the reality is that many of these cases occur without our interventions. They occur when local elected officials experience for themselves the high costs that are a consequence of this broken model.

Despite the enormous amount of evidence surrounding us, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund continue to insist on failed and outdated neoliberal policies. Bank officials continue to promote the idea that public sector investment crowds out private sector investment or competes unfairly with it for skilled workers. And both institutions continue to repeat the now classic, 'we no longer impose policies on countries'.

The World Bank has just abandoned its ideological 'Doing Business' report, which assessed and compared national tax policies, regulations and labour laws, including the 'ease of firing workers', which served as a stimulus for countries to enter directly into a race to the bottom to deregulate and abandon social and environmental protections. This report was used by some governments to try to attract investment. The study was abandoned in the context of a global scandal whereby the bank's directors forced staff economists to manipulate data.

To ensure a more caring, feminist, green and truly sustainable future, it is time for a system change that is focused on economic justice and centralizes public services. The Washington consensus must die and be buried. PSI rejects the idea of building 'back' after the pandemic. On the contrary, we must build forward and discard theconcepts that have created our current problems.

The current model has proved disastrously incapable of responding effectively to overlapping economic, ecological and health crises. We need a completely different relationship between the public and private sectors to create a sustainable, equitable and resilient economy. Strengthening the economic role of the state would enable us to pursue social goals, increase international solidarity and reform global governance to benefit all. Public investment must be reorganized to prioritize long-term collective value creation over private short-term profit. These are some of the key ingredients that will be necessary to guarantee our survival on this planet.