African governments urged to outlaw arbitrariness

Accra, Dec. 16, GNA - Mr Pius Kweku Pius, General Secretary of the Construction and Building Materials Workers Union (CBMWU) of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) on Tuesday appealed to African governments to outlaw arbitral decisions of companies that disallowed employees to exercise their democratic rights. He said governments should rather encourage employees to involve their workers in decision-making, adding that sharing of responsibility would lead to increased productivity and service delivery. Mr Quainoo, who was speaking to the Ghana News Agency, said co-operative work would reduce industrial dispute and improve good human relations between management and workers.

He attributed violation of Trade Union rights, which had been taken for granted for a long time, to the lack of respect to such rights by some management both in the formal and informal sectors. As a result, Mr Quainoo said, elsewhere workers had been subjected to harassment, arbitral arrest, torture and in some cases killings to prevent them from carrying out normal trade union work.