The Ugly Implications of Industrial Actions: Changing National Mindset

There is an ugly cliché in this country that when negotiating workers’ service conditions, the only language governments understand is strike; to legitimize that theory, workers’ unions often wield strike as a weapon during negotiations. The reality, though, is that unions tend to be strike-happy. Industrial actions constantly have victims. Eleven years ago, I surveyed a cross-section of polytechnic graduates – mostly 1980-2009 – in order to ascertain their impression of the polytechnic system. Among the variables was what hindered participants’ studies. To that question, all participants responded, “teacher strikes”.   

Anybody who was even slightly associated with the polytechnic system in those decades would fully appreciate the sentiments of the graduates. It became so bad that a cross-section of Ghanaians labelled the Polytechnic Teachers’ Association of Ghana (POTAG) “strikers”; the Association actually lost government favour. Therefore, at its Emergency National Congress in Cape Coast in 2006, there was a consensus to reverse the reputation of POTAG. The Association resolved to use dialogue, rather than strike, to negotiate conditions of service and other professional matters. Apparently, we have failed in that resolution, because in transitioning from POTAG to Technical Universities Association of Ghana (TUTAG), the status quo has remained. Indeed, old habits die hard.

The timing of the current strike raises grave ethical questions about TUTAG’s position as academicians and major educational stakeholders. A week after teaching began, the strike was announced. Many parents had gone through extreme pains in order to raise funds for admission forms, tuition and accommodation, to name these. A cross-section of self-sponsoring learners shared the same stress in order to meet funding obligations, only to be slapped with a sit-down strike after a week of lectures. A learner who belongs to the second category lamented to a key media personality. The latter informed the learner that POTAG/TUTAG relishes and thrives on strikes. The timing makes it rather unethical to defend TUTAG.

A second ethical questions pertains to distracting stakeholders from the business of implementing the double-track secondary education policy. The new concept might change the face of secondary education. Successfully implemented, the tertiary system would be a major beneficiary. In four years, some products of the double-track system would enter technical university classrooms. Logically, one would expect TUTAG to give full attention to the implementation of the new policy, lend constructive input in order to ensure a successful implementation of the policy, as well as add some needed quality to teaching/learning. Well-equipped secondary graduates are an asset to the tertiary classroom. In fact, TUTAG has an obligation. However, not only has it failed to monitor and contribute to the implementation of the double-track initiative, but it is also distracting attention from the implementation processes. Other serious ethical questions arise:

Should Government halt ongoing efforts in the double-track implementation in order to attend to TUTAG migration issues? Could the feet-dragging issue not have been effectively addressed in a non-combatant manner? Could a few more months of tolerance not have been a better option than this sit-down strike? Who really is at the receiving end of this harsh pay-out, Government or the ordinary Ghanaian tax-payer, some of whom also double as parents and learners?

Analysed through such questions, the strike assumes layers of oppressive implications for the Ghanaian tax-payer such that it fails to raise sympathy for TUTAG. Rather, it projects us as academicians who place less stock on genuine intellectual development. Since others have rejected the strike, who becomes collateral damage? Can the striking groups claim to have honoured all the required conditions for the migration? The answer could determine whether the action is hasty or compelling.

Making connections, another ethical question has to do with the path being created for the growing generations in our homes, classrooms and communities. If the message constantly being sent to them is that dialogue should be despised in favour of combat during worker-government negotiations, what leadership qualities would we be nurturing in them? And if they became leaders without adept negotiation skills, how would they protect/advance domestic, community, sectional, institutional, (inter)national interests? How would national key players pursue established – or initiate – bi-lateral, multi-lateral relationships?

Above all, individual, community, (inter)national issues are always interconnected in this world; an agency neglects such connections to its own doom. It is time Ghanaians began to weigh the future implications of present activities. Apparently, some generations failed to do so in the past decades. Consequently, a cross-section of contemporary generations are so bankrupt in community and national sense, unable to connect present to the future. Yet, living for the present alone negates our very humanity.

Thus, TUTAG has major obligations to the contemporary and future generations in reversing a national habit of dodging dialogue for adversarial approaches when it comes to negotiations. Since university classrooms are spaces for critical, analytical and reflective thinking processes, they ought to champion the course in changing national thinking order. Per their close links with industry and hands-on-training nature, technical universities should be icons of synergy and dialogue, through curricula and extra-curricular activities. It cannot afford to represent any other sentiment.

Government will always be government and employer, so it seeks to save as much money as it can, even as workers’ union seek to pry as much money as it can from the government. That push and pull trajectory has never converged through combat. Negotiating parties have always resorted to dialogue in order to resolve sharp divisive issues. Yes, parties will attempt to stall processes, for genuine and selfish reasons. There will be fulfilled and broken promises. Some expectations will be met, whilst others will be dashed, all inevitable outcomes of union negotiations. I am not an expert in trade issues; my pragmatic sense tells me one thing only: Dialogue is, and will always be, the best option. Over to you TUTAG!