Labour Unions’ demand for pay increase in limbo as 2023 budget presentation nears
With the 2023 budget set to be presented this week, public sector employees are still uncertain if their demand for a significant pay raise for next year will materialise.
The government has not yet agreed on anything with the labour union leaders after a meeting convened last Friday ended inconclusively.
Deputy Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, Bright Wereko Brobbey told journalists last Friday that talks will resume on Monday, November 21.
“We have not come to a consensus and therefore we have adjourned, because we believe that we will go and sleep over our respective positions and come Monday and hopefully complete,” he said.
Talks between both parties were expected to resume on Monday morning but labour union leaders have been left hanging.
Several hours into Monday, General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Thomas Musah said the government has not extended any invitation to them.
“As of last week Friday when the meeting ended inconclusively, we were thinking that today [Monday] we will reconvene, but as of now we have not yet received any invitation. So I cannot confirm whether the meeting will come on or not because we have not received any invitation,” he told JoyNews.
JoyNews is monitoring the situation and will provide an update accordingly.
The unions have demanded a 60 percent increase in their base pay for 2023. In their meeting with government on Friday, they tabled two proposals before the government including an increase in the base pay for next year.
“The first one is that as of 2010 the relativity ratio was 1.7 and the understanding was that steps should be taken to ensure that we close that particular gap. Twelve years down the line, nothing has been done and it is widening the wage gap which is not something we should encourage and it is making workers worse off.
“The second item has to do with the differentials between the minimum wage and the base pay. If you recall, in 2014 workers were given 10% COLA, there was no increment on the base pay but the minimum wage. We had to shelve any kind of increment with the understanding that the following year, measures will be taken. Unfortunately, in the year 2015 what happened was that workers were given 30% base pay which was making workers worse off,” he explained to JoyNews.
Source: Ghana News
