We’ll disturb any power that resists our strike – TEWU leaders dare KNUST management

The leadership of the Tertiary Education Workers Union of Ghana (TEWU-GH) on the campus of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology has threatened any authority that resists the strike action which takes effect on Thursday, February 1, 2024.

Their demands mirror that of the Senior Staff Association and the University Administrators currently on their third week of strike protesting directives that threaten their conditions of service.

The strike will affect major frontline operations of managing sanitation, security, hospital facilities, fire stations, and other academic support services on campuses of public universities across the country.

Already, facilities including University Basic Schools have been closed as these staff who constitute some ten thousand workers on the university labor front lay down their tools.

KNUST local chairman of TEWU, Charles Arthur who commands some 800 workers told reporter Ivan Heathcote–Fumador they are stopping at nothing to ensure no university authority thwarts the industrial action.

He alleged that some heads of faculty and university managers were clandestinely engaging striking staff and other workers to perform the duties abandoned by the agitating workers.

“We are advising the university management to respect this strike. We don’t want any situation where any university management will use power. If any university management uses any power, we will disturb that power".

Section 170 of the Labor Act clearly says that the employer may not temporarily replace labour when we are on lawful strike. We think that this is a law passed by the parliament of Ghana and it will be accordingly adhered to,” he cautioned.

Aside from demanding a withdrawal of a directive from the Ghana Technical Education Council to suspend overtime and extra duty allowances, they are also demanding that the government pay 9 months of their tier-two pensions to their fund managers.

TEWU-GH is further demanding that the government harmonizes a vehicle maintenance allowance which they describe as froth with bottlenecks of discrimination.

According to the union, while their conditions of service require that each staff member be paid a vehicle maintenance allowance depending on whether they used a car, motorbike, or bicycle; some university managers had resorted to giving motorbike allowances to staff even after they had presented documents proving their ownership to a car.

Announcing the strike on the KNUST campus on behalf of the National Executive Council of TEWU-GH, its national chairman, Suleman Abdul Rahman pointed out that the union is ready to sit for negotiations in the best interest of the conditions of service of its members.