On this International Workers’ Day, the Global Alliance for Tax Justice (GATJ) celebrates the hard-won achievements of workers worldwide. As a global coalition, GATJ stands with workers, trade unions, and social movements across the world to fight for a world where inclusive, effective, and just tax systems support decent work, strong social protection systems, and the realisation of human rights. 

Governments, particularly those from the Global South, are hindered in their ability to fund quality public services due to rampant tax abuse. While workers fight for living wages and better working conditions, the multinational companies and the rich which employ them exploit loopholes in our outdated international tax system. Each year, billions of dollars are “lost” to tax abuse instead of being spent on funding quality public services, including care work. 

The negotiations for a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UN Tax Convention) are a historic opportunity to rectify these systemic issues in our global tax rules. Governments must work together to end tax abuse and deliver the public resources needed to fund quality public services and invest in care workers. 

Healthcare, childcare, education, eldercare: care constitutes the basic fabric of society. Yet, care workers are often unpaid or underpaid and work in the informal sector. These workers, who are disproportionately women from the Global South, face chronically low wages, poor working conditions, and inadequate social protections. 

Together with trade unions and women’s rights movements, GATJ works for an inclusive and just social organisation of care that supports all workers, including informal, underpaid, and unpaid workers of all backgrounds. Governments must increase public investment in care services, ensure decent work for care workers, including fair wages, representation, and dignified working conditions. 

On this International Workers’ Day and everyday, GATJ works to: 

• Support labor movements fighting for decent work, living wages, and the rights of all workers, including informal workers and care workers.
• Demand governments recognise, reward, reduce, redistribute, and reclaim unpaid and underpaid care work, which is disproportionately performed by women and marginalized workers from the Global South.
• Ensure adequate public resources to fund public services including healthcare, education, and social protection.
• Advance a UN Tax Convention that is gender-transformative,  ends tax abuse, and ensures the rich and multinational corporations pay their share.