Impunity unpunished breeds arrogance – Knust TEWU threatens industrial shakeup

The KNUST local chapter of the Tertiary Education Workers Union of Ghana (TEWU) is threatening what it calls a massive industrial shakeup on the campus of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).

The union is protesting what it describes as deliberate actions of the vice chancellor, Prof Rita Akosua Dickson and university management, to sideline its leadership with impunity.

They insist after the union broke away from the Teachers and Education Workers Union of the TUC in June 2022, the university has failed to recognise their documents of incorporation duly secured under the Labor Act with the tacit approval of an overwhelming majority of all TEWU members of the sixteen
public universities in Ghana.

Though the union will not give full details of its intended action, its newly elected chairman, Charles Arther warns the university can expect any action immediately after the mid semester examinations.

“You know within the labour parlance, if we are requesting something and we are not seeing anything; automatically members will say there should be a shakeup and it has so many implications and interpretations. It could be that we can strike but management will have to use any legitimate means to sit with us,” he charged.

The union angered 'TEWU GH'; has been excluded from the University Council and all other committees where they are mandated to have representatives.

“Three months after the union came into existence, the Vice Chancellor herself told us some persons say they don’t belong to us and when we sked for the people she could not produce any names. We don’t know if the university management want to form a union with nameless and faceless ghosts

It has gone to the extent that management has prevented us from being part of Committees that we are supposed to be on, from council to the lowest committee. How can this be?” he queried.

Withheld union funds

The Tertiary Education Workers Union is also demanding that the university releases funds accrued from dues of its members; to allow the union carry out its mandated duties and operations to its members.

He explained, "Management is telling us the unions are two and it cannot differentiate between the two but we don’t understand that because it was a general meeting decision which is binding on everyone. It is our own legitimate monies deducted from our salaries as dues and KNUST management is subjecting us to grave punishment because no union can run for a whole year without its funds.

“In view of this we are not going to temper with next week’s mid-semester examinations. We think about the students and the university so we will corporate. But after we will have course to complain and if our members decide to shake the system, we will give up and allow them so that we can get our
moneys,” he emphasised.

TEWU maintains close to a thousand of its members and constitute one of the biggest workforce of the university.

The university risks a hold up in the services of sanitation and environment workers, drivers, faculty and departmental support staff, teachers, security and several other ancillary staff; should members of TEWU carry out their industrial action.