A Labour Economist and lecturer at the University of Ghana, Dr. William Baah-Boateng, has advised government and organised labour to dialogue and resolve prevailing challenges, instead of engaging in a public warfare.<\/p>\n
According to him, what appears to be extreme positions taken by government and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) would only worsen instability on the labour front.<\/p>\n
Dr. Baah-Boateng said there must be a tripartite committee meeting between government, Employers Association of Ghana and Organised Labour to discuss and amicably resolve the raging stand-off over pay levels.<\/p>\n
Dr. Baah-Boateng\u2019s comments followed Saturday\u2019s TUC ultimatum to government.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot afford this high cost of living with the current wages and salaries,\u201d TUC Secretary-General, Kofi Asamoah, said. \u201cWe want all negotiations on the minimum wage and the base pay [to] finish before the May Day. We are sending a strong signal out there\u201d.<\/p>\n
On April 1, 2014, Finance Minister, Seth Terpker, restated government\u2019s intension to freeze public sector pay at current levels.<\/p>\n
The proposal, he said, was within \u201cthe Ho Forum on public sector pay sustainability to reduce the wage bill as a share of tax revenue, from 57 percent in 2013 to 35 percent by 2017\u201d.<\/p>\n
The idea, he added, was to, among other things, put Ghana \u201cin compliance with the ECOWAS criterion of wage-to-revenue ratio\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
But, Organized Labour quickly dismissed the proposal in a deluge of statements issued after the proposal.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Monday, Labour Economist, Dr. Baah-Boateng said, \u201cThe best way to go around all this is negotiation at the tripartite level. All the parties would come up with their concern; how the hardship is affecting them.<\/p>\n
\u201cGovernment is talking about [cutting down on] fiscal deficit and wage is part of the expenditure. Employers are also concerned about prices of their inputs, and Organised Labour is also concerned about their real income, so this can be resolved at the negotiation table. [It must not be] one party saying I have frozen wages and one party saying I have given you ultimatum\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By: Martin Asiedu-Dartey\/Citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Labour Economist and lecturer at the University of Ghana, Dr. William Baah-Boateng, has advised government and organised labour to dialogue and resolve prevailing challenges, instead of engaging in a public warfare. According to him, what appears to be extreme positions taken by government and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) would only worsen instability on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":2814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[43,38,21],"class_list":["post-15425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-foresight-medical-center","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-psychiatric"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}