…And labour goes to sleep
Barely a month ago, the leadership of some notable labour unions in the country mobilised their rank and file to hit the streets nationwide in protest of what they termed high utility tariffs as announced by the Public Utilities and Regulatory Commission (PURC).
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As early as 6am, many anxious workers young and old, heeded the call to go under the scotching sun, joined their leaders to march through some principal streets in the various regions to register their outrage at the increases.
Many were those who deemed the action as useful as it was meant to bring pressure on the government which was said to have engineered the increases to reduce subsidies on the consumption of water and electricity in the country.
Having sounded that warning to the government through its action, the leadership of labour met with the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations and other government officials to renegotiate the tariffs.
Labour news confab
At a news conference prior to the demonstration, organised labour told workers that the economic conditions that pushed Ghanaian workers to hit the streets in 2014, have not improved.
It based its arguments on the high inflation which was then at about 17.7 per cent and the imposition of an energy sector levy which ballooned the prices of petroleum products by an average of 30 per cent.
The leadership further argued that workers have had enough of the taxes and increases in utility prices and wanted the government to be sensitive to the plight of workers.
Labour leadership pushed for utility prices to drop by 50 per cent across board. That means the 59 per cent for electricity and 69 per cent for water announced should be reduced by half.
They also wanted to have the energy sector levy completely scrapped to bring the prices of petroleum prices back to normal. But government will have none of that.
Outcome
As a result of the demonstration, another meeting was convened and strangely, the leadership of labour succumbed to pressure from the government officials and heeded to pledges for a reduction which until now, has not been effected.
The leadership of labour seem to have closed its ears and eyes to the fact that, the tariffs have rather gone up beyond what was the original before they went for that meeting I will refer to as a complete waste of precious public time.
The outcome of the meeting was not only disappointing and regrettable but also shameful and unbecoming of leaders who are supposed to be well vest with skills of negotiations.
BATNA/WATNA
In the first place, it was clear right from the beginning that the leaders did not have any Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement (BATNA).
Apart from lining up a series of actions to undertake should the government remain at its position, there was no concrete arguments to support that position and it was therefore, not surprising that they woefully failed to achieve anything meaningful at the table in spite of the many news conferences and loud talks on various radio platforms.
For their Worst Alternative to Negotiated Agreement (WATNA, the least said about it the better.
Was the WATNA of labour to conduct a sit-down-strike or have a fully-fledged strike action to push the government to see reason to reduce the tariffs to appreciable levels?
At different times, leads of the various unions said different things as to their collective position and that clearly exposed them.
Labour outsmarted
While the discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was going on, it was written on the wall that these increases everywhere (utilities, taxes) would be inevitable. Labour leaders cautioned against this but yet again, sat aloof and instead of providing alternatives for the government, it sat on the fringes and the consequences is what we all bare today.
The Labour Minister was smart enough to push for the first time, wage negotiations ahead of the budget hearing. The government’s arguments was that it needed to capture the increase in wages in the budget, a move one will describe as important and necessary to protect the budget from overruns.
But while this was done, the government hid its intentions as far as these increases were concerned and only acted this year when labour was done with its long talk.
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Conclusion
It will be wrong to fault the government for the various measures it has taken to rake in more funds to as it were, accelerate development projects in the country. The increases are meant to reduce budget overruns and also reduce budget deficits.
But labour should have been smart to see through all that and acted to ensure that much as these increases were inevitable, certain clear steps needed to be taken by the government itself in a pragmatic way to plug the leakages in the system and also ensure that the utility companies lived up to expectation.
What sense does it make for the utility companies to increase tariffs when loses within their system is way above 50 per cent?
For instance, we are told that about 50 per cent of water produced cannot be accounted for. And it is similar for electricity.
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There are thousands of households that do not pay for the water and electricity consumed, a phenomenon which has left a huge debt for the utility companies which are only noted for living in luxury at the expense of the poor worker.
The government itself is heavily indebted to the utility companies and the PURC is mute about this. It finds the ordinary worker an easy target to collect tariffs rather than find innovative means to find these clueless utility companies the means to collect from those who use their services for free.
Common sense should tell us that the more we increase the tariffs, the more the government’s bill goes up and the more its institutions avoid the debt. The more the tariffs increase, the more people find means to consume and not pay because the utility services seldom chase them for it.
Consider the various slums across the country and the population there. These inhabitants never pay for the power they use neither do they pay for the water they consume but at the end of the day, the burden is pushed onto the public service worker whose salary is slapped with all manner of taxes at source just to cater for characters who seek their selfish interest.
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Again, why didn’t labour raise the issues about the tax net which the Finance Minister pledged to widen when they met at the negotiation table?
The President at the recent news conference stated that only 30 per cent of the people who are supposed to pay taxes are doing so. This simply means that 70 per cent are not paying and that is where the Finance Minister should have been made to come up with a clear policy to rope in just another 30 per cent while it develops a pragmatic road map for the remaining 40. But again these labour representatives sat aloof for him to justify his actions rhetorically as usual.
There were more cogent issues that labour leadership needed to have considered at the table and insisted on for them to be corrected before accepting the position of the government during the negotiations.
For me, I guess the leadership of labour has given enough reason why they should be kicked out of office for a new crop to take over to do the biding of the suffering workers.
The strong labour front that existed in the past has collapsed and the time to bring in a new crop is now.
The government will do what it deems fit for the citizenry but it takes labour among other bodies to highlight where there are gaps and action will be take. This means labour must pick the early warning signs to be able to intervene before they get to the one sided Parliament to approve. My opinion.