Labour agitations in Ghana have become almost an annual affair characterized by strikes, demonstrations and hot exchanges between government and labour groups. While government maintains that so much of the nation’s revenue is pumped into salaries and emoluments, labour groups argue that they drive the wheels of production hence should be well sorted out.
Since the inception of the 2015 labour agitations involving state attorneys, medical doctors, university teachers…etc., the government has relied on its communicators and spin-doctors to throw propaganda tools at the public to court sympathy and to divert attention from the core issues of inequity in public sector wage administration which has been the basis for labour agitations over the years.
The bone of contention between government and medical doctors is the lack of Terms of Employment, mostly referred to in this part of the world as Conditions of Service. These are the conditions that an employer and employee agree upon for a job and include an employee’s job responsibilities, work days, hours, breaks, dress code, vacation and sick days and pay; and such benefits as health insurance, life insurance and retirement plans. Employees whose skills are in higher demand have an advantage when negotiating terms of employment.
Government communicators have set in motion a machinery to incite other public sector workers against medical doctors. And before everybody knew it, many people began accusing striking labour unions, especially members of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), of being callous, lacking professionalism and a sense of sympathy. The medical doctors are further accused of wanting to collapse the economy with their demands.
Those who fell for that lie forgot that Ghana has always remained resilient even under the weight of bigger challenges: Ghana didn’t collapse when newly elected Members of Parliament took a whooping GH¢13.5m rent advance in 2013 (with each MP receiving GH¢50,000). Ghana didn’t collapse when the state recklessly paid huge sums of monies to individuals and groups as judgment debt including GH¢51m to Agbesi Woyome ($1m of which he confessed paying to Marietta Brew-Oppong, the Attorney General) and €94m to Construction Pioneers among others. Ghana didn’t collapse when government chartered a private jet at the cost of $500,000 to fly $3m to the Black Stars in Brazil during the 2014 World Cup when a simple bank transfer would have been alright. Ghana did not collapse when MPs approved hefty increases on their pay and perks in 2012. Ghana didn’t collapse…
Perhaps, the most ludicrous remarks I have heard anyone make concerning the GMA demands is one by Hon Klutse Avedzi (MP for Ketu South and Chairman of Parliament Finance Committee). The man said, that if medical doctors insist on government meeting their demands, one of only two things would happen—either that the public would be required to pay more taxes or that, there would be the need to cut down on expenditure on developmental projects. Really? How about reducing the salaries of ministers and members of parliament? How about taking some tax from the President?
Indeed, it makes no sense to suggest that people who go round during elections to beg for votes should be entitled to a bigger chunk of the national cake in terms of pay and perks than those who vote them into power. Were they not with us sharing in our poverty before getting elected? If their living conditions should improve, should it be at the expense of those who voted for them?
While staking their claims and imputing improper motives to the medical doctors, the spin doctors have not stated whether or not they would reject what the doctors tabled as their bargaining proposals if given; neither have they stated what they are getting (or will get) for speaking for government.
The spin doctors have also suggested that the opposition is behind the position taken by the medical doctors not to settle for anything less than a document containing their conditions of service. Assuming without admitting, that this is true, I dare the NDC to tell the general public what it would have done differently if the tables were turned. After all, he who calls for equity must come with clean hands.
While it is true education brings about change in attitude and values (and higher level education is expected to multiply one’s learning) it is ironic that most people falling for, and swallowing the baits thrown at the public, hook line and sinker are people who go around bragging about several academic qualifications.
If there has been any time that intellectuals are required to lead the masses to develop minds that would lead to social change, the time is now. As Antonio Gramsci (an Italian Marxist, cited in George Ritzer 2008), puts it: the masses need to develop a revolutionary ideology, but they could not do that on their own; revolutionary ideas could only be generated by intellectuals and extended to the masses and put into practice by them; the masses could not become self-conscious on their own—they need the help of social elites. Once the masses had been influenced by these ideas, they would take the actions that lead to social change.
This is the time for social elites to stand up and be counted and not be part of the bandwagon of shallow minds. Unfortunately, many people in this part of the world have a box mentality and cannot see beyond what their masters tell them. It is good to have education, but education is only as good as the impact its participants make on their own lives and to harmony in the community where they live and on the larger ecosystem. Many people who attend school these days do so only to tickle their egos and are mainly pre-occupied with the certificates they would be awarded when they graduate than with what they could do with the new sets of knowledge they would acquire.
Consequently, they graduate with virtually no change in attitude or values. But the inability of social elites to lead an awakening of the masses will not be strange because, as Bertrand Russel asserted in his “Principles of Social Reconstruction”:
“…if thought is to become the possession of many, not the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds men back—fear lest their cherished beliefs should prove delusions, fear lest the institutions by which they live should prove harmful, fear lest they themselves should prove less worthy of respect than they have supposed themselves to be”.
Of all the people falling for the logical fallacies being thrown about by the gentry, it is the hypocrisy of some teachers that shocks me most. Current generation of teachers argue that they deserve to be paid as much as other professionals like lawyers, medical doctors and engineers because: “all professionals can boast, but the teacher taught them all.” They further demand the reward for their work should be given them here on earth and not in heaven as they are neither sure if such a place exists, nor if they will get there even if it exists.
Every responsible teacher expects his students to dare to be different, courageous and successful so if the claim that the teacher taught every other professional is true, then why not be happy doctors are not settling for less? Or maybe George Bernard Shaw is right in his suggestion that: “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.”
Teachers’ terms of employment expired as far back as 2002 and since then, the three teacher unions (GNAT, NAGRAT & CCT) have not been able to get government to put another one in place. But instead of waiting patiently for the doctors to get their demands, then proceed with their own set of demands, other public sector workers, including teachers are behaving like crabs in a bucket, pulling down any of their compatriots that attempts to climb up.
Politicians will continue to cash in on the vulnerability of the masses for as long they are content with mediocrity and lesser things. John Henrik Clarke once warned that: “powerful people will never educate powerless people on what it means to take the power away from them; the aim of the powerful people is to stay powerful by any means necessary.” This is as true for the Industrial Age bourgeoisie as it is for the Information Age politician. It is in the interest of politicians that the masses remain miserably ignorant. That way, they will always swallow any thrash thrown at them.
After all is said and done, I wish to appeal to the medical doctors to return to the consulting rooms, for the sake of the vulnerable and innocent ones…