Dr. Yaw Baah
We think organised labour led by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) stampeded its rank and file to walk away from work for the wrong reasons.
Strikes are weapons in the hands of workers to fight for their rights. However, in so-called civilised societies, labour unions hardly declare indefinite strikes. The longest period such labour unions would walk away from work is normally for 48 hours or 72 hours.
It would be crazy for essential workers such as health workers and air traffic controllers to turn away from work for more than 48 hours. It does not make any sense for organised labour including doctors and nurses to decide to abandon work because SSNIT has decided to offload some interest in six loss-making hotels to a Ghanaian.
In this case, it was decided to sell the shares to Rock City Hotels owned by Bryan Acheampong, Minister of Food and Agriculture. We have asked before and we do so again: what would be the reaction if the sale had been done to a foreign entity?
The mere mention of Bryan Acheampong should evoke some ill-feelings among a section of the society, especially NDC elements out of sheer envy.
We are always decrying our inability to take commanding heights of the economy, yet we are not prepared to support Ghanaian entrepreneurs to expand their horizon.
Following former President Kufuor’s declaration of the “golden age of business,” it was generally held that the private sector holds the key to the realisation of that goal. We admire other jurisdictions such as Nigeria and South Africa where the state takes deliberate actions to turn their citizens into millionaires.
Aliko Dangote in Nigeria and Cyril Ramaphosa are typical examples. Ramaphosa has stakes in a mobile giant but he is today the President of South Africa. Here in Ghana some of our people are very envious of successful people and would do everything to get the citizens to shoot down an intervention that can change the fortunes of the working people.
Okudzeto Ablakwa and his cohorts were able to mislead the people of La in Accra about SSNIT hotel sales to the extent that they left their daily endeavour for a very unproductive exercise called street protest.
A better managed La Palm Royal Hotel and the Labadi Beach Hotel would bring more benefits to the people of La, especially the youth. Somehow, however, the people of La were made to believe that President Akufo-Addo was engaged in state capture by selling state assets to themselves.
It would be imperative to ask Dr. Yaw Baah, the capo of organised labour, how much those hotels are contributing to SSNIT.
Ordinary people are easily swayed by the diabolical and personal agenda of many of our leaders, including the TUC.
We urge the workers if they are minded by their plight to begin to question the TUC leaders about their pay and privileges. If workers carried out that search they would find to their chagrin that the Secretary General of the TUC and General Secretaries of the various unions are living off the dues of the suffering workers. These category of union leaders are like Arabian Kings in Ghana.
We would not incite workers against organised labour. Far from it, but the bitter truth must be told. The tendency among union leaders to rally workers for street protests and strikes is just to hide their failure to provide the leadership needed for the workers wellbeing.
The classical example is the sale of the SSNIT hotels to Bryan Acheampong. Organised labour has representation on the SSNIT Board, and they were expected to voice their disagreements in the Boardroom but not on the streets. Did the representatives of organised labour kick against the sale or their ugly noises started when Bryan Acheampong won the bid?
And again, was organised labour not part of the decision to seek the expression of interest in the hotels and subsequently advertise in the two state-owned newspapers for bids to buy 60 percent interest in the hotels?
In any case, how are decisions arrived at in the Boardroom? We know that in matters like the sale of the hotels, the decision can be by consensus or simple majority. Which one was used here?
We expect organised labour to stop throwing dust into the eyes of the public and end the game-plan of organised labour to be active only when it comes to salary negotiations but not about productivity.