Organised Labour, Government Fail To Agree On 60 Percent Increment In Base Pay

The meeting between organized labour and the government to negotiate a 60 percent increment in the single-spine salary structure for 2023 has ended inconclusively. The public sector workers explained that the daily base pay is lower than the government’s newly announced daily minimum wage of GH¢14.88. Thomas

Musah, the General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) explained to the media that public sector workers deserve the 60% increment because the gap between the national daily wage and the base pay has been wiped off. Organised labour insists that they will not back down on the proposed 60

per cent. Another meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday, November 23. Before the base pay, all the public sector workers were negotiating on their own until 2007 when they were all brought together under the single spine. Now, at the time we started, level 10 of the single spine was about 10 per cent of the national wage.

Today, as we speak, that gap between the national daily wage and the base pay has been wiped off. In 2021, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) agreed on the base pay increments for public sector workers, as part of labour negotiations with the government. However, after the agreement, some members of the labour unions expressed their disappointment at the percentage

increase, saying it was too small. Members of a coalition made up of public sector workers thus protested in 2021 to express their anger and demand an upward review of public sector salaries. They insisted that the four and seven per cent increment was woefully inadequate for their survival, considering the current economic hardship. Another meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday, November 23.