Fire Workers And Replace Them With Whom?

Henry Herbert Lartey is an interesting character, if also because whenever he weighs in on any public controversy or debate, it has almost invariably been to make a complete nuisance of himself. His latest contribution to the debate on the raging impasse between the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and public and civil servants, over the management of the latter's Tier-2 pension funds, has entailed the leader of the so-called Great Consolidated Popular Party's call for the summary dismissal of the victims (See "Fire the Workers If They Refuse to Negotiate - GCPP Leader" Ghanaweb.com 11/7/14).

I am calling these public and civil service employees "victims," because they are really being abjectly disrespected and victimized by the government's adamant refusal to recognize their human and labor rights. And the Mahama government and its representatives and assigns have done this by flagrantly flouting a contractual agreement which allows these workers and their leaders and representatives to determine how their pension deductions and savings are managed and invested for their future welfare and comfort. The Mahama government claims that since it is the main employer of these workers it, perforce, has the exclusive right to determine the course of the destiny of these employees.

Now, such a logical tack inexcusably insults the intelligence of our civil servants and public workers; for it presumes these government employees to be the veritable serfs, or slaves, of their employer, brashly and insolently ignoring the fact of serfdom having no place, whatsoever, in our twenty-first century political culture.

The preceding scandalous state of affairs is what Dr. Lartey self-righteously presumes to so imperiously endorse. But what is even more outrageous is the GCPP leader's call for the government to promptly and summarily dismiss these workers who are only fighting for their inalienable right to self-determination. Dr. Lartey erroneously, and mischievously, claims that the striking workers of the Big-12 labor unions are refusing to negotiate the contractual terms of the investment options of their pension funds, but it is actually the Mahama-led government of the so-called National Democratic Congress that is flatly refusing to negotiate on legitimately democratic terms.

As of this writing, a labor-court judge had reportedly ordered these workers to go back to work. And as was to be expected, these workers have decided to suspend their righteous industrial action while they appropriately battle it out in court, where they have filed a counter-suit in defense of their rights. Dr. Lartey laughably claims that the hitherto legitimately striking workers are "wicked and unprofessional," because their industrial action is "leaving the average Ghanaian market woman, shoemaker, farmer and student stranded." Such an argument, of course, is insfferably lame because many of the striking workers have spouses and relatives who are market women, shoemakers and farmers.

Many of the allegedly stranded students are also the children and wards of these very same workers. And so, really, Dr. Lartey cannot be aptly said to fully appreciate what he is talking about. If the GCPP leader really believes that the aggrieved workers are making the country ungovernable, then he had better prevail on his friends and cronies at the Flagstaff House to wake up and smell the proverbial coffee. But even more importantly, it would be interesting to learn precisely whom Dr. Lartey intends to replace these highly trained professionals with, should these civil and public servants decide to resume their industrial action. Cuban workers?

Come on, Dr. Lartey, get a grip!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 11, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]