They have threatened an industry strike by June18
Teachers of the 46 Colleges of Education in Ghana have rejected the migration of staff of Colleges by Fair Wages and Salary Commission (FWSC) backed Ghana Tertiary Education Council (GTEC) saying the approach will disadvantage section of the staff members.
The umbrella body of the teachers, the Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana (CETAG) also threatened an industry strike by June 18, 2024 if the National Labour Commission (NLC) failed to comply with the payment of Compulsory Arbitration Awards.
CETAG made the call in a press statement released to the media as a reminder to the government to act quickly to their grievances to curb any disturbances in the colleges.
The migration by GTEC is expected to grade all staff of the Colleges of Education on the same payment scale as staff of the public universities to receive the same salaries and other allowances.
According to the leaders of the Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana, the migration must cater for all junior staff, senior staff, and senior members as pertained at the public universities in Ghana.
CETAG leaders also mentioned that GTEC used the qualification of public university staff to rate workers at the colleges hence college workers must enjoy the same salary as staff at the public universities.
“Any legitimate migration by GTEC/FWSC must take care of all staff in the Colleges of Education irrespective of their qualification or job description not a selected few who are less than 2% of staff in the colleges,” they said.
CETAG also said, "When the former Polytechnics were converted to Technical Universities, all the staff were migrated to the public university grade structure irrespective of their qualifications job description.”
“When we were migrated from Ghana Education Service (GES) to Colleges of Education (CoE) payroll, every staff was migrated irrespective of qualification and job description,” CETAG argued.
The teacher union leaders confirmed that every staff in the college currently qualifies equivalent to the public universities which CETAG’s staff rationalization and placement audit report also establishes and all staff have their placement report.
CETAG asserted that: “Research master holders at the public universities and nursing training institutions take a yearly Book and Research allowances of 1,600 dollars and 1,500 dollars respectively while colleges of education staff with the same qualification take 1,000 and 1,464 dollars.”
Relating to the delay in the payment of the National Labour Commission’s Compulsory Arbitration Award issued on 2nd May 2023, the leaders unravelled that they used diverse ways to press the government to heed their demands but their efforts proved futile.
The association leaders warned they would decline any directive by the National Labour Commission to desist from any strike if the commission failed to respond to their request to process the payment of their allowance by the due date.
