Mineworkers cry foul over huge salary discrepancies
The National Executive Council of the Ghana Mineworkers' Union of the Ghana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) has expressed its ultimate displeasure over huge salary discrepancies, and other benefits existing between expatriates, their top Ghanaian management, and other staff in the mining industry.
To buttress the above wide salary inequalities, the mine workers have hinted that a recent research conducted by the African Labour Research Network, further revealed that “a common feature of the wage structure of gold mining companies, is the huge income inequalities”.
Additionally, they disclosed that the remuneration of AngloGold Ashanti executives was 289 times as high as the lowest mineworker, who risks his life on the job, while an executive of Gold Fields earns 201 times the income of the lowest paid mineworker.
In AngloGold Ashanti the average expatriate salary is $19,586.00 per month compared with the Ghanaian Senior Officer who earns $711.00 per month, doing the same or similar job.
Again, according to the aggrieved mineworkers: “In AngloGold Ashanti an average rent allowance of $15,000.00 per annum is paid to top Ghanaian management staff in Gold House, Accra, meanwhile, the management of AngloGold Ashanti continues to drag its feet in our effort to negotiate a fair rent allowance for non-accommodated unionised members at its Obuasi and Iduapriem mine sites.”
However, just this month, AngloGold Ashanti (AGA) and the Ghana Mines Workers Union (GMWU) concluded a three-year Collective Agreement, effective January 1, 2009. As part of the Collective Agreement, a historic three-year deal on wages and salaries was also agreed on by the two parties for the company employees.
The three-year deal is a 12% wage/salary increase for 2009 and 10% increase for each of 2010 and 2011.
In addition to the wage and salary agreement, the two parties have, among others, raised the current rent allowance to economic levels, to ensure that employees not accommodated by the company can afford decent accommodation.
Briefing some journalists on a resolution adopted by the National Executive Council at the end of a two-day meeting held in Accra, over the weekend, the General Secretary of the Ghana Mineworkers' Union of the GTUC, Mr. Prince William Ankrah, assisted by his Deputy, Mr. Eric Kwabena Gyima, added that between 2007 and 2009, some management staff in the industry, including Gold Fields and AngloGold Ashanti, have had their emoluments adjusted by 100%, whilst a 24.5% increase, demanded by the unionized workers over the period to bring the minimum basic pay of the mineworker to $500.00, was considered as “outrageous, unrealistic and unsustainable” by the management of the companies.
Mr. William Ankrah warned that the above picture was seriously untenable, and cannot be tolerated by the Ghana Mineworkers' Union of the GTUC any longer. He stressed that the union would use every means at its disposal to ensure fairness and equity in the reward system in the mining industry of the country, saying “the practice of unfair wages and salaries is against the laws of Ghana.”
The General Secretary therefore called on the Minerals Commission to ensure that mining companies pay their employees, irrespective of their colours and nationalities, fairly.
The outspoken Mr. William Ankrah lamented that the situation, where expatriates occupy positions which could be competently occupied by a Ghanaian, could no longer be tolerated by the union.
The National Executive Council therefore welcomed the efforts being made by the Minerals Commission to address the issue, he noted. Furthermore, the National Executive Council of the Mineworkers called upon the Minerals Commission, and other regulatory agencies, to seriously monitor the influx of expatriates into the mining industry, and was quick to warn that “the Ghana Mineworkers Union shall resist any attempt to bring in any expatriate whose skills are available in the country.”
To ensure job security in the mining industry, the National Executive Council has recommended to the government, to legislate the setting up of an escrow account similar to the reclamation bonds which mining companies are required to post, as part of their legal requirement in operating a mine, to cater for employees benefits in event of unforeseen mine closures or loss of job.
Touching on the problematic Ghana Consolidated Diamonds (GCD) in Awatia, the National Executive Council regretted that employees of the company had not been paid for the past two years, and appealed to the government to speed up the divestiture implementation programme, and also make available monies from the Consolidated Fund to pay the employees their outstanding salaries and other allowances, to alleviate their sufferings.
On the upcoming oil industry, the Deputy General Secretary, Mr. Eric Kwaben Gyima, and his boss, added their voices to the call on the government to make available details of the oil agreement(s) to the Ghanaian public, as part of the tenets underpinning good governance in the country.