TUC is a lame lion - Atuguba

Accra, April 23, 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."