Organised Labour have said\u00a0they have not given up on their planned strike action, which was supposed to have followed their nationwide demonstration.<\/p>\n
The pressure group\u00a0on Wednesday, held a nationwide demonstration in protest of what they described as killer taxes on petroleum products and exorbitant hikes in utility tariffs.<\/p>\n
They had earlier issued a roadmap to force government to reduce the taxes and utility hikes as well as demand a 50% increase in salaries of public sector workers.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”YT1BDNR5gtZZA3nqD67mxU7AzrU0efkx”]As part of the roadmap, public sector workers were supposed to have embarked on a strike action immediately after the demonstration, however this has not been the case.<\/p>\n
In line with this, many are questioning whether Organised Labour has backtracked on its threats to embark on\u00a0the industrial action captured in its roadmap.<\/p>\n
But speaking on Citi FM<\/strong>\u2019s news analysis programme, The Big Issue<\/em><\/strong>, \u00a0in relation to the labour issues, the Vice President of the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Angel Karbonu explained that they have only decided to set it aside to continue with negotiations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have not called off the strike as if it is no longer on our agenda. We have set it aside for now to allow negotiations to go on. The outcome of the negotiation will determine what action we will take from the next time we sit with government because it\u2019s also not fair that you are negotiating with your employer and then you go and announce a strike. It\u2019s not done in labour relations.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Kingsley Offei Nkansah, General Secretary of the General Agric Workers Union also speaking on The Big Issue<\/strong> explained that they are currently evaluating the outcome of the demonstration.<\/p>\n \u201cOur roadmap did indicate that after every action we will go back to review the action and make an assessment of how far we\u2019ve gone in the negotiations. That is precisely what happened after Wednesday after which we went back to the table with government on Thursday afternoon and went ahead. The government started making some concessions in our directions, we also stated what our concerns are and we agreed that we will sit again come Tuesday,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n He said the demonstration was to send a clear signal to government about the plight of workers in the country.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to send a clear signal to government that enough is enough, that the suffering had gotten too far so let us facilitate the conversation on the table better. To make them understand, we held a nationwide action.\u201d<\/p>\n We were fair with government <\/strong><\/p>\n When asked why they still embarked on the demonstration despite negotiating with government, Mr. Nkansah insisted that they had been fair with government saying \u201cthe action was communicated to them before we did it. It\u2019s not like we did it out of the blue.\u201d<\/p>\n Meeting not in deadlock<\/strong><\/p>\n He also rejected claims that the negotiations with government has hit a deadlock because none of the parties were willing to compromise their stance saying \u201cit\u2019s an impasse not a deadlock.\u201d<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Godwin A. Allotey\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n