Labour Consultant, Senyo Adjabeng, has revealed that the pay expectations of employees and organised labour within the public sector have not been achieved under the single spine salary structure.

According to him, government has encountered some challenges with the implementation of the policy due to lack of extensive deliberation on it. Mr Adjabeng explained that more is expected to be done to ensure such bottlenecks are resolved.

“For me, in terms of the consolidation, it has been achieved. Unfortunately, the pay expectations of employees and organised labour has not been achieved. There have been structural problems with implementation of the policy because I believe that enough consultations have been lacking and finally, I also think dispute resolution mechanisms that the Fair Wages and Salaries Act put in place to ensure that disputes, when they occur, are resolved smoothly, those have not worked”.
Senyo Adjabeng

His comments followed the Employment Ministry’s hint on a review of the over a decade-year-old salary structure.

Commenting on government’s intention to review the salary structure, Mr Adjabeng intimated that policies of such nature have to go through a comprehensive audit after five years to be able to correct all the technical issues. He revealed that by the tenth year, it should have gone through systematic review to a point where it is achieving most of its objectives.

“Unfortunately, I’ve not heard that any such audits or discussion have been done by the stakeholders. Then, beyond the tenth year, we are still yet to do any comprehensive review. Indeed, I will agree that it is time to review the policy because over ten years is way overdue to review such policies.
Senyo Adjabeng

Review of salary structure

The Labour Consultant disclosed that the first step toward reviewing the policy has been taken by the National Labour Conference which has set a precedent to iron out all the various issues for the commencement of consultative process. This, he explained, will address all the nuances and current grievances against the policy. Following this, he noted that a technical committee must then draft the necessary changes, “send it through the tripartite committee” and then beyond that it goes through the processes of legislation.

“I think that immediately though, something can be done. The legislative instrument of the Fair Wages Salaries Act of 2007 can be reviewed and that is normally easier to do. So, that will start taking care of the issues before the long-standing approach of reviewing a legislation then comes to fruition. But immediately, they have to start serious a consultation on the specific grievances against the policy so that it can be taken care of and immediately, the legislation reviewed”
Senyo Adjabeng

Recounting the objective of the policy, Mr Adjabeng indicated that the policy resulted from the conversation on public sector productivity in 2005 where it was decided that productivity had to be matched with appropriate remuneration. Based on this, he noted that a pay policy was suggested to take care of the needs of workers and serve as a tool to motivate them to be more productive.

The Labour Consultant asserted that one of government’s primary motive for the policy was to address its payroll challenges, which was “largely scattered”. Mr Adjabeng expressed that the objective of the policy has been largely achieved although productivity indicators don’t seem to have “notched up” enough to make any difference.

“Various public service groupings had different sub-payrolls or pay structures that was applied to them so everything was disintegrated; even though the civil service and a large section of the public sector were on the Ghana Universal Salary Structure. So, it became important to consolidate government payroll to block all the leakages where some of the public sector organisations were using some of their IGF to pay certain large allowances and also to ensure that there was control over remuneration expenditure in the public sector”.
Senyo Adjabeng

Following this, Mr Adjabeng expressed that he can’t blame the organised labour or labour employees due to the economic conditions in the country which has impeded efforts in ensuring the policy is funded well enough to be able to pay employees.