Labour unions must pay their members when they embark on strike, MP
You can’t go on strike to put pressure on your employer in the private sector, MP
The Member of Parliament for Obuasi West, Kwaku Kwarteng, has said the government must not pay public sector workers who embark on illegal industrial strike actions.
According to Kwarteng, members of workers’ unions who go on strikes just to put undue pressure on the government for better conditions of service must not be paid, asaaseradio.com reports.
The MP, who made these remarks on Asaase Radio’s ‘The Big Bulletin’, added that the government should not pay members of the Civil and Local Government Staff Association of Ghana (CLOGSAG), who have been on strike demanding that the government pay them some allowances.
“… I’ve listened to the details [CLOGSAG strike] a little bit and I think the government should not pay them. And it is not just CLOGSAG, let it not look like it’s the special point I’m making in respect to CLOGSAG. I’m making a general point that whenever workers embark on strike action, those actions are unlawful in the eyes of the Labour Act, these workers should not be paid.
“It serves the employer and, in this case, the employer is the government. You cannot do that in the private sector, so, where is it that when it comes to the public sector business, then we treat it as though it’s nobody’s business. Who’ll own a private business and say that ‘I’ll continue to pay you, even though you’re not working on grounds that you have an issue with me as an employer.’ Where can we entertain this apart from the public business?” he questioned.
He further stated that public sector workers can go on strikes if the labour unions they form part of agree to pay their salaries during the period of their industrial action, adding that taxpayers’ monies must not be used to pay workers on strike.
CLOGSAG members have been on strike since Thursday, April 21, over the inability of the government to pay a neutrality allowance it had agreed to pay its members.
The association in a statement it issued, directed all its members at the Ministries Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) as well as the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to stop going to work because the government had failed to honour an agreement they had with them, on January 20, 2022, to pay the allowance.
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Member of Parliament for Obuasi, Kwaku Kwarteng