The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has urged the government to raise workers’ pay and cease blaming the economic downturn on COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
According to the Union, workers’ salaries should keep pace with the country’s rising inflation rate, which is driving food and other goods to rise in price.
“Go to the store; food costs are rising every day, and these are the circumstances we’ve found ourselves in, and it’s very easy to blame COVID-19 and the Ukraine war for this.”
“Employers should index our salary to inflation since employers modify the prices of their goods so the inflation rate does not hurt them the way it affects us,” said TUC Secretary-General Dr. Yaw Baah at the Organized Labour Pre-May Day Forum 2022 in Accra.
The Executive Secretary also decried the government’s use of COVID-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
He did, however, reassure his coworkers that the union will try to improve working conditions.
“If the currency rate behaves the way we want it to, it will show up in our pockets in a big way, and nobody should inform us.” Because if you go to the drugstore, you’ll notice that prices are always rising, and these are medicines.
“Let us not become overly reliant on the government and employers.” Let us consider what we can do as workers and unions to help ourselves. Dr. Baah said, “We will negotiate properly this year, and I want to guarantee you that I will lead that negotiation.”
“We will continue to discuss, we will continue to negotiate,” he said, “but if the discourse fails, we will engage in unprecedented industrial action in this country.”
