CPP SOLIDARITY MESSAGE TO THE TRADE UNION CONGRESS (TUC) AND WORKERS OF GHANA AND AFRICA 29th April 2008

The entire leadership, rank and file members of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) would like to express their solidarity and good wishes to the Trade Union Congress and all workers in Ghana and Africa on the occasion of the celebration of Workers Day, May 1, 2008 .

The CPP would like to remind all workers about the key and crucial roles they played in the struggle for political independence. The strikes and protests of the trade unions were crucially important to the liberation struggle in Ghana and Africa . The workers, in spite of the severity of the ecology of colonial rule and formidable constraints on their organizational efforts, managed to assert themselves first on political issues and then on economic questions. In those days, the linchpin of the attack on the colonial order was a symbolic interdependence of the labor movement and the CPP. The trade union in Ghana had a decade or more independent development and experience before the formation of the CPP in 1949.

Today, the dynamism of the trade unions has slowly ebbed and their influence on economic and political issues is virtually non-existent. Yet like the colonial period, the same dominance of our economy by external forces still exists. Our natural resources, service and industrial sectors are all externally dominated to the detriment of workers across board. In the new era of globalization, Ghana and Africa have lost the capacity for independent policy and have completely succumbed to the forces of neo colonialism.

The alliance of Pan-Africanist workers and Pan-Africanist causes has been enfeebled and our leaders and trade unions have failed to internalize Pan-African consciousness and vision towards political and economic unification. The African worker is not just a worker but also a member of the African race; a race that has been brutally victimized over the last five hundred years by alien enslavement, colonization and psychological debasement. Workers have to wake up from this present prostration and lead the struggle for economic and political emancipation.

The CPP is poised with the support of the workers come December 2008 elections to win power and reassert the resilient and inherent power of workers.

Long live the Convention Peoples Party.

Long live the workers of Ghana and Africa .

Long live the Trade Unions of Ghana and Africa .

Issued By:

Dr. Kweku Osafo [CPP Spokesperson on Labour Issues]