Decent Workers Day: ICU-Ghana calls for sanctions against exploitative employers

The Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU-Ghana) has called on the authorities to name, shame and sanction exploitative employers to sanitize the employment system for the good of all stakeholders.

The Union said many jobs in the country have been made “precarious” through casualization and contractualization work regimes, which have denied such workers their future financial security.

“These classes of workers are denied their fundamental human rights to freedom of association and to join a trade union for the promotion and protection of their social and economic interests as espoused by the 1992 Constitution and the Labour Laws of Ghana, the Union said.

This was in a statement signed by Mr Morgan Ayawine, the General Secretary, ICU-Ghana to the Ghana News Agency in Accra to mark the World Day of Decent Work, which falls on October 7.

The day is marked every year by the Labour Movement all over the world to garner support for the implementation and sustainability of “Decent Work.”

“The casual, contract, and temporary work regime, though allowed by the Labour Laws of Ghana for a limited period not exceeding six months and for seasonal jobs only, has been entrenched and mainstreamed such that some permanent employees are outsourced by some employers to employment agencies and redeployed into the same organization as casuals and or contract workers.”

“This situation has reduced their wages or salaries and denied them social insurance like Social Security and National Insurance Trust, thus jeopardizing their future financial security,” the statement said.

The statement called on all labour organizations, the Ghana Employers Association, labour authorities, and the Government to join hands to demand the immediate cessation of entrenched casual and contract work beyond the seasonal job period of six months.

“If this incessant exploitation of labour does not stop, the ICU-Ghana will not hesitate to mobilize and collaborate with organized labour in the country to resist any attempt by any employer to frustrate efforts towards the promotion of the decent work agenda,” it said.

It said the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that lasted for almost two years took a heavy toll on a lot of workers as they lost their jobs through staff attrition by some organizations and, in some cases, total closure of businesses.

Source: GNA