|
TUC is a lame lion – Atuguba
Accra, April 23, Ghanadot/GNA – Dr.
Raymond Atuguba, a lecturer at the Ghana Law School on
Wednesday described the Ghanaian Labour Unions as a sleeping
lion and challenged Ghana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) to
rise up and do what lions do best.
He said: “The labour union over the years has become
complacent, lame, lethargic, sleepy and anachronistic…it is
for this reason that I tell the lion to rise up and do what
lions do best.
“I am also sad that after I tell the lion to rise and fight,
I will receive the usual disapprobium, first from the
governors of the forest and second from the bunch of cowards
who hid behind faceless pseudonyms on the internet and
insult everyone who opens his mouth in this republic to
speak some sense.”
Dr. Atuguba made these observations at maiden May Day Public
Lectures organized by the GTUC, Civil Servants Association
(CSA), Ghana Federation of Labour (GFL), Industrial and
Commercial Workers Union (ICU), and Judicial Service
Association of Ghana (JUSAG) on the theme; “Deepening
Ghana’s Democracy-The Role of Organized Labour.”
He said the lack of vigorousness at the labour front had
contributed to the union organizing its maiden May Day
public lecture in 2008, saying, “one would have thought that
each year and on May Day, the GTUC will organize a well
advertised, well managed and well disseminated public
lecture, delivered by the many intellectuals and activists
in the country.”
Dr. Atuguba explained that such public lectures would have
given labour movement opportunity to examine critical
national issues in to make informed contribution to
Government.
“Unless labour redefines its role in the national
development, it is merely a passenger in the national wagon.
Such a role, for me, is a very disgraceful role for Labour
Movement to take,” he said.
Looking at the role of organized labour in national
development, Dr Atuguba said Labour Movement had been used
for “dirty” work such as the Positive Action of 1950,
building of infrastructural and social services based
immediately after independence and then ditched them.
He said successive governments have used Labour Movement for
the attainment of their ambition through – giving labour
some sleeping tables, clubbing labour into unconsciousness
or giving it a doze of “target bitters”.
Tracing political abuse of the labour unions in the country,
Dr Atuguba said the National Liberation Council was a
setback for Labour, as through the manipulation of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) retrenched over 60,000
state-owned enterprises workers. The retrenchment was a
calculated means to deflect the finances of the TUC.
He said labour leaders were also arrested and held in
custody and the passage of obnoxious law repealing Section
24 of the Civil Service Act of 1960, which made trade union
membership compulsory for civil servants leading to the loss
of nearly half the membership of the Public Service Workers
Union between 19967 and 1968.
He said the return to civilian rule in 1969 unfortunately
did not change the abuse of Labour Movement, “as the
Progress Party (PP) was a class-based disdain for Union
leaders.”
Dr. Atuguba said the PP Government passed Industrial
Relations Amendment Act 1971 (Act 383) dissolving the TUC
with immediate effect and empowering the government to
appoint a board of receivers to dispose of all the
properties of TUC.
He said: “the Convention People’s Party gave Labour Movement
the first doze of sleeping pills, the NLC and PP Governments
hit Labour Movement with a club and when it rose up they hit
it with blunt instrument that sent it to sleep once again.
“The Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) and the
National Democratic Congress (NDC) also hit Labour with a
club and held it down, not allowing it to rise up at all.
“Today the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) with the Labour
Act 2003 has replicated the very same situation in 1967
where Labour has been awoken and given a doze of ‘pusher or
target or opeimu bitters’; local alcoholic beverage, and
allowed to go crazy in splinters.”
On Election 2008, Dr. Atuguba said the two main political
parties in the country NPP and NDC – one is the real blind
man at the cinema watching the movies and the other is the
replacement of a blind man. And they will switch places
until doomsday unless something is done about it.
He therefore called on Labour Movement to assert themselves
in setting the agenda for this year’s polls; “Labour
Movement should root for the party that has the most people-centred
and Ghanaian agenda for societal development.”
GNA
|
