“As long as the legal processes keep going, we’ll remain on strike” – Dr. Baffour-Adjei
The University Teachers’ Association of Ghana has hinted that, as long as the government remains adamant towards meeting their demands and the legal battle lingers on, they will stay off all teaching and related activities.
This follows the decision of the High Court (Labour Division) in Accra, presided over by His Lordship, Justice Frank Rockson Aboadwe, to implore the leadership of the National Labour Commission (NLC) and the University Teachers Association (UTAG) to settle the matter out of court.
Though the Union has welcomed the advice by the court, President of AAMUSTED-UTAG, Dr. Stephen Baffour-Adjei in a media interaction with the host of the Major News, Erich Joey Odonkor, revealed that, failure of government to follow through with the timeline they committed themselves to, following the advice of the court to have the case settled out of court during last year’s industrial action has led to the resumption of the strike
“On the shoulders of what the court said [last year], we all saw the need to come together as a people to resolve it but when we had done so and given some timeline, government couldn’t follow tthrough with the time line and that is why we’ve had the course to resume the strike”
“The ball is now in the court of government and NLC. As I keep saying, we haven’t taken anybody to court, they took us to court [and] in the wisdom of the judge, the case has to be settled out of court” he stressed.
Outlining the reasons for the resumption of the industrial action, President of AAMUSTED Branch of UTAG said they were able to resolve the matter somehow except that, whatever they committed themselves to on paper was not put to any good use by government.
“We are going to inform our members and we will wait for the individual or agencies that initiated the court action to take the first step and we’re going to go along with it, adding “It is a good call, we welcome it and we expect that within the days that we have been given by the court, government will be proactive and resolve our case once and for all.”
To buttress its claim that UTAG have on numerous occasions exhibited good faith during negotiations but government is yet to shift its position, Dr. Baffour-Addjei said, “When we started, we were talking about Market Premium and Basic Salary which will together give you US$2,084, however if you check our recent communique, you will notice that the basic salary is out of the table for now whiles we negotiate the market premium.”
Meanwhile, university students who have been left stranded without no information should hope for an earlier settlement of the impasse or face a lengthy period of inactivity as UTAG prepares options to challenge the NLC up to the apex court should the outcome not be favourable to them.
“That the court injunct our strike, we are the teachers of the law so we are going to use the same court processes to seek to aside whichever injunction that has been obtained by the NLC, however as long as the legal processes keep going, we’ll remain on strike” Dr. Baffour Adjei revealed.
In case the impasse has not been settled by February 10, 2022, NLC will be expected to move its two applications, the first being a motion for the enforcement of the directives issued by NLC on January 13, 2022, which is for UTAG to return to the lecture halls and the second being an interlocutory injunction to stop UTAG from continuing with their strike.