Our public services are at stage critical. One last shove could erode what’s left of their bedrock and change fundamentally the way we all live. Sounds alarming?  

Well, unless you are a banker with eye-watering  pay, perks and bonuses or one of the growing number of billionaires in Britain, you should be alarmed.

Over the past four-plus years that the Tories and Lib Dems have been messing up the country, mearly 750,000 jobs have been cut in the public sector. And there are many more to come.  

No-one on the left falls for their bluster that there have been loads of jobs created in the private sector to compensate. The evidence points to low-paid, part-time, zero-hours jobs plus a massive rise in self-employment.

Women, in particular, have been dealt the double whammy of job loss and cuts to the vital services that they rely on. In some sectors twice as many women as men have lost their jobs. 

Most worrying of all is the huge number of young people out of work and with no hope in sight, including more than half of young black men.  

In that climate, cutting more and more public-sector jobs with their knock-on impact on the local economy — shops, bars, hairdressers, restaurants — is foolhardy to say the least.  And for those people (ie most of us) who rely on public services to make our lives better or easier, it’s a further blow. That is why we should care about our public services — how they are funded and how they are delivered.

Huge swathes are being privatised — more than a quarter of public-sector workers are working on outsourced contracts. And that is where the big problem of zero-hours contracts kicks in.  

The burgeoning care sector is where many providers do not pay the living wage. They operate zero-hours contracts, do not pay for travel or training time and confine care to 15 minute slots. 

In the next 20 years, the number of people over 65 will increase by 50 per cent and the number of people aged over 85 will double. Worried? You should be.  

This government won’t act to protect our elderly or their carers, so we need to get a government that will rebuild home care with properly trained and paid staff, where none of the resources are creamed off as profit for shareholders.   

On the ground, Unison’s ethical care charter is gaining traction among local authorities, but we need to spread its orbit.

Local government is struggling to survive and keep services going faced with massive cuts that are digging into the bone and the council tax cap.  

Councils have lost a staggering £20 billion since 2010 and there’s worse to come.  

Our NHS, once again, is being undermined by under-funding and is all set to become the sale of the century as the Health and Social Care Act kicks in.  

Probation is privatised, police jobs cut, education cut or privatised — if it’s public that’s its fate. 

Then there’s the proposed TTIP European trade agreement — a sinister move to open up even more of our services to the unaccountable, faceless money men of the world who don’t care two hoots for working people.

As a public-sector trade union, of course we argue for public sector provision and to defend democratic local government, our NHS and decent public services. But it’s more than that.  

We argue for it on the grounds of economy, efficiency and necessity, and on the grounds of fairness, equality and because how we look after all our citizens is what marks us out as decent.

A few years back, the New Economics Foundation carried out an analysis of the public worth of each of six professions.    

City bankers destroyed £7 for every pound they generated. Childcare workers generated between £7 and £9.50 worth of benefits to society for every £1 they were paid. 

Hospital cleaners generated £10 in social value for every £1 they were paid and tax accountants destroyed £47 of value for every pound in value they generated.

I believe we must keep reminding people of the value of our public services to society.  

That’s why at this week’s TUC we are asking delegates to back our call to secure their future. 

In the run-up to the general election, which I believe is one of the most crucial in my lifetime, we must put public services firmly on the agenda.

Turning the tide on privatisation and outsourcing is a key battleground and one that I believe we can win.

When we have with us the spirit of Unison’s Doncaster Care UK workers, striking to stop an unscrupulous hedge-fund employer cutting their pay and conditions.  

And when we have the spirit of those fantastic women who marched in the footsteps of the Jarrow crusade to save our NHS.   

Our alternative vision for how our public services should be delivered and funded is built on the enduring values of fairness, valuing staff, compassion and social solidarity.  

I know that the majority of our citizens would support that vision, given the chance — so we have everything to play for.

Dave Prentis is general secretary of Unison.