Federations call on unions to back public services petition

Last month the general secretaries of four European union federations, which represent workers across the public services, called on their affiliates to up their support for a petition backing public services.

The four federations, which cover workers across the public sector (EPSU), the education sector (ETUCE), the transport sector (ETF), and military personnel (EUROMIL), have written to their national affiliates calling on them to make the petition a priority over the next few weeks.

The petition was launched by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) at the end of last year with the aim of collecting a million signatures by the time of its congress in May - although by mid-February it had only collected 21,000 signatures.

The petition calls for public services to be given "a firm legal basis and thus immunity from ideologically motivated free market attacks". It has been produced in 19 languages and is available from www.petitionpublicservice.eu

The federations recognise in their letter that one million signatures is an "ambitious target", but they refer to their success against the services directive and call on their affiliates to link the European-wide petition to their national campaigns.