Koforidua, April 07, GNA - The Eastern Regional branch of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) on Thursday re-affirmed its support for the national leadership of the association. It assured the leadership of GNAT that the branch was solidly behind them and they could forever count on the branch. Nana Addo Gyau Akabisa 11, the Eastern Regional Chairman of GNAT, who was addressing a press conference in Koforidua, said GNAT was an association that had well laid down structures for resolving grievances.

He appealed to teachers who were aggrieved as a result of the fallout from their migration onto the Single Spine Salary Structure to calm down and join the rank and file of the association and to support the leadership of GNAT in its quest to fight for better conditions of service.

Nana Addo Gyau Akabisa said with the establishment of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC), the labour relations atmosphere in Ghana had changed adding that by law, all negotiations concerning personnel emoluments for public sector employees shall be done with the FWSC.

"Unions with Bargaining Certificates which enabled them to negotiate income levels for their members with their Management ceased with the establishment of the FWSC".

He said instead all Unions in the public sector were required to do Centralized Bargaining under the leadership of the Ghana Trades Union Congress with the FWSC adding that individual Unions no longer had the right to do sector-wide bargaining as it used to be. Nana Addo Gyau Akabisa said before the migration of the Ghana Education Service employees onto the Spine, the GNAT and the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) with the support of Teachers and Education Workers Union (TEWU) had to spend considerable time re-negotiating the grade levels based not only on job content evaluation results but also on job roles

"Through this exercise, we managed to improve upon the grade placements for all teachers. The situation would have been worse if the grade levels were not re-negotiated," he said. "A Principal Superintendent who was placed on 14H by the Consultant was moved two levels upward to 16H whilst the Director General who was on 24H was also moved to 25H".

He said knowing the repercussions of the consolidation of the professional Allowance, the GNAT petitioned President John Atta Mills to use his High Office to direct the FWSC to grant the demand for a teacher retention premium.

"It is therefore unfortunate to hear people say that GNAT did nothing when the professional Allowance was withdrawn under the guise of consolidation," he said.