Review of casual workers policy won’t end abuses — ICU
The Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU), has ruled out a review of Casual Workers Policy as an alternative to control abuses casual workers suffer from their employers.
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The union is rather urging government to focus on ensuring that employers strictly abide by the current Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651).
The General Secretary of the ICU, Mr Solomon Kotei, told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS in Accra, that the present law was not outmoded, hence there was no need for the government to review it.
Mr Kotei was responding to a statement by the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, that there could be a possible review of the Casual Workers Policy in the country to control exploitation of workers by employers.
According to the minister, the rights of casual workers are been infringed upon with regard to the period within which a causal worker can be engaged.
Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651)
A casual worker, according to the Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651), means a worker engaged on a work, which is seasonal or intermittent, and not for a continuous period of more than six months and whose remuneration is calculated on a daily basis.
The Act defines, a temporary worker as a worker who is employed for a continuous period of not less than one month and is not a permanent worker or employed for a work that is seasonal in character.
The Act also describes a contract worker as a person who is hired to work for specific time frame for an agreed wage or salary.
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Recruitment agencies
According to the general secretary of the union, mostly these category of workers are engaged through agencies which are mainly outsourced companies.
“The principal employer pays good amount of money to the outsourced company. Unfortunately, this amount does not reflect in the salaries of the contracted workers. The outsourced company sadly makes profit at the expense of the contract workers,” he added.
He said the number of recruitment agencies that were presently springing up had teamed up with employers to infringe on the rights of workers in the country.
Dynamics in the labour market
Mr Kotei noted that in the past two decades, the world economy had witnessed remarkable changes in the structure and dynamics of the labour market.
“The flexibility of the market and provision in the labour laws of most countries of today have inadvertently opened the door of opportunity for some employers to blatantly abuse the rights of employees in a manner that seems to the world normal, even though employment security is negatively affected,” he said.
He said in Ghana, poverty had created a ‘fertile’ work environment where many highly desperate job seekers in the labour force were willing to take any job irrespective of how inhuman they might appear for survival purposes rather than dignity.
“In Ghana, for instance, there are a number of casual workers whose job description and length of service makes futile the definition of casual worker per the provision of the Labour Act, 2003,” he added.
According to him, employers had become powerful and succeeded to some extent in using the lenient spot of the law to treat casual workers as if they did not deserve the rights given to permanent employees.
Permanent employment becoming slimmer
Touching on a research conducted by the union, Mr Kotei indicated that casual and contract workers’ rights were abused with impunity by some Indians, Lebanese and Chinese employers because the labour act were not implemented strictly.
“A sizeable number of companies, particularly the multi-national companies are employing new methods of outsourcing such as ‘casualisation and contractualisation’ of the labour to save cost and maximise profits,” he said.
Mr Kotei noted that permanent employment in the country was becoming slimmer as against casual and contract work which was increasingly becoming pervasive.
“The new forms of employment are done without adherence to the spirit and letter of casualisation and contract work as spelt out in the current Labour Act,” he said.
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“The casual and contract workers are exploited to the extent that they are paid low wages sometimes without medical and non payment of social security contributions,” he added.