President Mahama pledges to review Single Spine Salary Structure and pensions

President John Dramani Mahama has pledged to carry out a review of the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) and pensions, as part of government efforts to address concerns of public sector workers.

The President made the promise in his address at the opening of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) 54th National Delegates Congress and Seventh Quadrennial Conference in Accra, on the theme, “Education and Development: The Ghana Education Service (GES) at 50: Reflecting, Reviewing, Revising, and Growing the Profession and the Unions”.

The SSSS is a public sector pay system aimed at standardising wages for fairness and transparency by grouping jobs onto unified salary scales.

It was introduced by the Kufuor administration; however, negotiations were not complete when Professor John Evans Atta Mills won the 2008 election, with Mr Mahama as his Vice President.

President Mahama said the Kufuor administration, prior to leaving office, threw a lump-sum increment and dumped a single spine on Ghanaians.

He said, however, that organised labour, led by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), decided they were not going to accept it and that they would negotiate with the new government.

“And so it took quite a while for the negotiations to take place. But eventually, we managed to get a spine that was working. It was not exactly straight, a bit crooked, but at least everybody got something,” he said.

“And so we started paying the arrears and all that, and we managed to get through all that before we left office in 2016. Since then, a few things have happened. The spine is very crooked now and everybody is unhappy. Everybody is unhappy with the spine.”

President Mahama said the TUC raised concerns about the SSSS with the government and asked if they could look at the whole salary structure again.

The President reiterated that they were very willing to review the SSSS so that they would be able to remunerate people better.

This, he said, would enable workers to give off their best in terms of what they are asked to do.

Concerning pensions, President Mahama recalled that a few years ago, they carried out a new pension reform, saying, “Everybody was happy — Tier 2, Tier 3. It looks like the time has come for us to look at it again.”

He said the TUC, as a leader of organised labour, raised the issue with the government.

He noted that he had told Mr Joshua Ansah, the TUC Secretary-General, and his team that the government was prepared to put together a working team to look at the whole pension reform and come up with some suggestions to see how they could improve it, so that everybody would be happy and feel secure going into retirement.

Reverend Isaac Owusu, the National President of GNAT, in his welcome remarks, appealed to the President for an immediate review of the single-spine pay policy within the year to reflect the government’s Resetting Agenda.

“We are resetting Ghana, and so the pay policy must reflect that Resetting Agenda. It is essential that we advocate improved salaries and benefits that recognise the critical role teachers play in shaping our society,” he stated.

“A well-motivated teacher, Your Excellency, is more productive, and this directly translates into better learning outcomes for our students.”