The Trades Union Congress (TUC) of Ghana, in collaboration with the Trades Union Solidarity Centre (SASK) of Finland, on Monday launched a report on the working environment in Africa with regards to decent work.
The 104-page report, titled; “Decent Work in West Africa,” entails case studies of the decent work situation, focusing on selected areas in three countries focusing on the mining sector in Burkina-Faso, financial services sector in Ghana and the construction sector in Sierra Leone.
The report defines decent work as opportunities for productive work in which rights are protected, which generate adequate income with adequate social protection, as required under the 1999 Convention of the International Labour Organisation.
It said although the concept denotes availability of employment or income generating opportunities for all who desired to work, decent work was seen as a rarity in much of West Africa.
The findings, among other things, points out to the lack of correlation between economic growth and the creation of decent employment, as majority of workers in West Africa were trapped in employment forms that lacked all attributes of decency, despite decades of sustained and impressive economic growth in the region.
It said many Africans were working because they only had their labour power as their income-generating asset, yet they did not earn much to live a decent life, neither were they protected or insured against ill health nor old age; and child labour was rampant, limiting the human capital potential of the next generation of workers in the sub-region.
Mr Kofi Asamoah, Secretary-General of the Trades Union Congress of Ghana, who launched the report, applauded SASK for its sustained relationship with the TUC and other African countries, which had been mutually beneficial.
He also commended the Labour Research and Policy Institute (LRPI) of the TUC for handling Ghana’s case studies on the financial service sector.
Mr Asamoah said it was heartwarming that the report, in an outstanding manner, contributed to bringing to the fore some of the challenges confronting trade unions especially in Ghana, since the onslaught of free market forces.
This, he said, includes the growing outsourcing and atypical jobs especially among the youth, the abuse of workers’ rights such as maternity protection and annual leave and compulsory overtime, the non-adherence to the principle of equal pay for equal work of equal value, as well as the abuse and undermining of trade union rights such as the right to organise and collective bargaining.
The report, therefore, provides a qualitative support by which workers could mount pressure through active campaigns on their employers to ensure compliance of the laws.
Mr Asamoah said the financial services sector report would provide a better understanding of the decent work situation to trade union actors in particular, to adopt relevant and far reaching strategies to service members for their sustained interest in union activities and encourage greater membership recruitment of the financial services sector workers.
Mr Prince Asafu-Adjaye, Researcher with the LRPI of the TUC, said the report had made recommendations calling on the Government to provide the needed resources to the various ministries, department and agencies in charge of labour relations to ensure effective monitoring and operations.
He said it was important to improve trade union density within the financial sector since their presence had proven to play an influential role in workers’ welfare on the labour market.
The report, he said, also recommended that trade unions educated their members on their respective Collective Bargaining Agreements to enable them to demand their rights.
