The public sector workers explained that the daily base pay is lower than the government’s newly announced Daily Minimum Wage of GH¢14.88.
Already, government says it is hopeful that their negotiations will come out successful.
Thomas Musah is the General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) and he has been explaining why public sector workers deserve the 60% increment.
“Before the base pay, all the public sector workers were negotiating on their own until 2007 when they were all brought together under the single spine. Now, at the time we started, the level 10 of the single spine was about 10 percent of the national wage. Today, as we speak, that gap between the national daily wage and the base pay has been wiped off.”
In 2021, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) agreed on the base pay increments for public sector workers, as part of labour negotiations with the government.
However, after the agreement, some members of the labour unions expressed their disappointment at the percentage increase, saying it was too small.
Members of a coalition made up of public sector workers thus protested in 2021 to express their anger and demand an upward review of public sector salaries.
They insisted that the four and seven percent increment was woefully inadequate for their survival, considering the current economic hardship.
On Wednesday, August 18, 2021, a similar demonstration was held by the group in Accra to drum home their demands against the base pay increase.