Speaking Of Strikes, Labor Standards and Salaries

It is generally accepted that the rights of workers in any country that adheres to normal labor standards include the right to go on strike when all available means of redress have failed or when employers refuse to abide by the agreed-upon standards of negotiations. Ghana has a well established Trades Union Congress which professes or pretend to be fighting for the rights of its members. Most workers in Ghana therefore enjoy these rights of negotiations and the right to go on strike. And they have used and misused these rights over the years.

Labor rights also go hand in hand with labor responsibilities. A worker is deemed to have the right to negotiate for descent wages and also has to recognize his/her responsibility to work hard to increase productivity. In all countries that adhere to normal labor standards, the responsibility of workers to work hard to increase productivity go hand in hand with the right to negotiate for higher or descent wages and remunerations from time to time.

In Ghana however the Trade Unions and their members only learn about or know the right to ask for higher pay without learning the corresponding responsibility to work hard to increase productivity. The word productivity does not feature anywhere in the vocabulary or the code of the Labor Unions in Ghana. The only thing you ever hear the labor union leaders talk about, scream about and threaten about is higher pay and higher pay. I have followed closely the pronouncements of labor leaders in Ghana over the past several years. I have paid close attention to the language they use when addressing their members at meetings. I have even attended and observed some of their biennial conferences and workshops. The talk is always about getting more pay and better conditions for their members. Occasionally the Ghana Trade Union leaders will take some interesting (sometimes misguided) positions on certain national issues without reference to the realities on the ground and their implications for the nation socially, economically or politically. And quite often too you hear them issuing threats, mostly to the government of the day, to comply with this or that within a specific time or else….

I have been disturbed by these trends in the labor movement in Ghana. I believe its not responsible leadership on the labor front to just demand rights without fulfilling the corresponding responsibilities of increased productivity. We all know that the worst culprits in this labor saga of “enjoying rights without responsibility” are the public employees, those fortunate souls that work in the public service…those that have what is known in Ghana as government jobs (aban adwuma). These group of people including civil service workers, medical professionals and teachers have this strange belief that their work is more important than anyone else. And they believe strongly too that anytime they ask for more pay, their employer, the government (aban), should give in. And if aban does not give in immediately, they reserve the right to hold the nation to ransom by going on strike. Most of them go to work anytime they want and leave anytime they want. To most aban adwuma people, productivity is not part of the reason why they were hired.

My other problem with the Trade Unions is that they never educate their members, those in the aban sector and the private sector, to understand the simple fact that once you declare a strike action, you are not producing anything. You are serving notice that you want to cause enough discomfort to your employer and/or the public to force the employer to negotiate. That is their right. But that strike action can only be declared after you have followed all the laid-down legal labor procedures. That is only when you are placed in the legal strike situation. Most important of all, once you declare a strike action, your employer is not and never obligated to pay you your remunerations. It is your labor union that is responsible for your upkeep, whatever that entails, under your labor relations agreement with your Union.

This simple labor standard is also lost on the minds of the trade unions and their members in Ghana. They believe that they reserve the right to go on strike (withhold their services) and get paid throughout the period they withhold their services. And their Union leaders never educate them to understand this simple fact that you cannot eat your bofrot (the Ghanaian doughnut) and have it at the same time. It is not an acceptable labor standard anywhere in the world to go on strike and get paid. That will amount to your employer thanking you handsomely for causing him/her discomfort. Why do the Union leaders not educate their members on this simple issue? It is because it is the Unions that are required to pay their members once a strike action is declared. So if they force the employers to pay the striking workers, the Unions get to keep the booty. This is the simple truth.

Recently an association known as the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) whose members mainly teach in the Senior Secondary Schools decided that they will go on strike because they were not being paid enough. And strike they did go for over two months when the new school year began in September, 2006. Ironically, this group of public employees had broken away from their parent group, the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) which is the legally-recognized labor union that has the legal bargaining power for teachers in Ghana. The NAGRAT guys asked the government to forget about GNAT and negotiate with them directly, a legal breach of the Labor Act. The government rightly refused. The Ghana National Labor Commission that has legal oversight responsibility for granting negotiating rights went to court to seek a legal interpretation of the action of the teachers.

In a ruling on October 31, 2006, the Court declared the action of the striking teachers as illegal ruling that they had no bargaining power outside their parent body, the GNAT. It then ordered them to go back to work immediately. Some of them did, others refused in contravention of the court order. Holala!! Ghana is an interesting place. It is the only place in the world adhering to the rule of law where people can flout a court order and go unpunished.

The NAGRAT members then came up with a very unreasonable demand. They demanded to be fully paid for the two months that they were on strike. What an affront!! Their leader who goes by the name of Kwame Alorvi put forward an interesting argument: He wondered why they will not be paid their salaries when NDC Parliamentarians were paid when they walked out of Parliament for two weeks in 2006, why doctors and nurses got fully paid when they went on strike in 2005 and 2006 and why University teachers were paid when they went on strike in 2005. On that point I agree with him. All those group of workers whom he referred to should never have been paid during the period that they were on strike. The government made a serious mistake of not withholding their salaries. Maybe it is now waking up.

The reality should now be drummed into the ears of all workers that they can never eat their bofrots and have them at the same time. No striking worker is entitled to any pay from his/her employer. It’s the unions that declared the strike action that should pay them. The “fresh-from-strike” and badly bruised NAGRAT teachers should look for the office of Kwame Alorvi and pick up their pay checks from there. And I hope this should serve as a very good lesson to others contemplating strike actions.

Finally I appeal to the Ghana Trades Union leaders to embark on proper education of their members to let them understand the real implication in embarking on strike actions, actions that should be the very last resort but which Ghanaian workers use as the first line of action. And the labor leaders should also drum into the ears of their members that labor rights always go with labor responsibilities.