Universities' Senior Staff Threatens Strike Resume Over Unfavorable Working Conditions.| Globecalls.Com

The Universities Senior Staff Association of Universities of Ghana has accused the government of not showing enough commitment to addressing concerns raised over their unfavourable conditions of service, which resulted in them declaring a strike in May.

The strike was suspended on June 11 following a meeting with the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission in which they were assured that all outstanding issues would be resolved.

According to the association, however, they are yet to receive any feedback from the government’s representatives on the matter, a month after they returned to work.

The National Chairman of the Association, Zakaria Mohammed, said members of the Association will not hesitate to lay down their tools again if the government fails to heed their demands.

“Following our deliberations with Fair Wages [and Salaries Commission] which led us to call off our strike, we were informed that our demands would be sent to the government and that they would get back to us in a week’s time. Now our case is that since that agreement, we haven’t heard from the government. Even with the tier 2 pension arrears, the interest computation has not been done. No letter has come from the government.”

“In the negotiations that we are engaged in, we still do not know what percentage the government is giving us. So what was the purpose of even calling off the strike? So we are warning the government that if this is going to be one of the failed promises, then this time around, we are going back to basics and now that we have increased our membership to 14 universities, we will ask all of them to go on strike.”

The Association declared a strike on May 18, 2021, over the failure of the government to pay its members Tier 2 pension contributions.

Members of the association were asking for the award of market premium and non-basic allowance, as well as the finalization of negotiations of their conditions of service.

The National Labour Commission and the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) met with the leadership of the universities’ senior staff on Wednesday, June 9, 2021, in a bid to resolve their grievances.

This compelled the association to call off its strike.

However, the group is agitated because it feels the government has not shown enough commitment to addressing their concerns.