Teachers’ strike illegal — Labour Commission

The National Labour Commission (NLC) has directed striking teachers belonging to the three teacher unions in the country to call off their industrial action and return to work.

It said in the exercise of the authority conferred in it by Section 139 (1)(b) of the Labour Act 2003, Act 651, it found the associations’ action in violation of the law and, therefore, the ongoing strike by the unions was illegal.

A statement signed by the Chairman of the NLC, Mr Andy Kwabena Asamoah, said the commission had, on Tuesday, December 10, 2019, met the representatives of the Ghana Education Service (GES), the Ministry of Education and the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission, but representatives of the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) and the Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT-GH) were absent.

Failure

The statement said NAGRAT, GNAT and CCT-GH failed to notify the NLC and their employer of the ongoing nationwide strike, in contravention of Section 159 of the Labour Act 2003, Act 651.

Members of NAGRAT, GNAT and CCT-GH began a strike last Monday due to what they said were delays in the payment of legacy arrears which spanned between 2012-2016.

Declaring their intention to go on strike at a press conference last week Thursday, the unions said, among other things, that they were concerned about the payment of the arrears because their checks had revealed that the arrears had been verified and approved for payment by the Controller and Accountant-General’s Internal Audit Unit about three weeks earlier.

“However, we were informed that when the verified data were handed over to the Ghana Education Service (GES) for review and action, the GES would not budge because it claimed some discrepancies had been discovered with some of the payments already effected,” the President of GNAT, Mrs Phillipa Larsen, who spoke on behalf of the unions, said at the press conference to announce the strike.

GES reacts

But the GES expressed shock at the strike by the unions, saying the conduct of the union leaders was in bad faith and undermined the good working relations which had been established and nurtured over the years.

According to the Director-General of the GES, Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, about 95 per cent of the affected 120,232 staff of the GES had been paid and the rest were going through the process to be paid.

A statement signed by the director-general said since 2017, the current government had paid arrears due to those who deserved them, adding that it was significant to note that as of September 2019, about 87,556 members of staff of the GES had been paid their full salary arrears, representing 95 per cent of the total staff validated.

“On November 9, 2019, the management of the GES received another set of data from the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department covering 1,847 personnel who were to be paid the salary arrears,” it said.

Examination

A close examination of the data, it said, indicated that anomalies would have led to an excess payment of GH¢11.3 million.

“Some of the personnel were to be paid on undeserved rank. Some of the names had no personal records on the GES payroll from 2012 to 2014 to establish that they could be owed salary arrears over that period.

“Some of the listed personnel were not owed any salary arrears and yet had been credited with huge sums of money, in some cases up to GH¢58,000. Some female personnel were to be paid Night Watchmen Allowance when they have never been night watchmen within the GES. Some staff who were owed about six months had been credited for only two months,” it said.

Management

The statement said on the basis of that, the management directed that the data should be audited to verify the genuineness of the payments in order to ensure that only deserving staff were paid the right amounts of money due them, adding that the unions were duly informed of that development.