Workers asked to exercise restraint on SSSS

THE Director of Pay Policy, Analysis and Research at the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC), Mr John Amankrah, has called on public sector workers who have not as yet been migrated onto the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) to exercise restraint.
He pointed out that representatives of the workers’ unions knew what was going on as far as the process was concerned and appealed to the workers to give the commission some time to properly complete the work before it.
Reacting to threats of industrial action by members of the Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) and the Ghana Registered Nurses Association (GRNA) in the past few days, Mr Amankrah said the FWSC was currently working on some data presented by the representatives of the workers, adding that as soon as the work was completed, they would be paid accordingly.
He explained that although the time given to migrate the affected workers onto the new pay structure had elapsed, there was the need for them to exercise patience to ensure that the right thing was done.
“The workers themselves have raised some concerns which need to be looked at before the work can be completed,” he stressed
When asked whether the workers were aware of the challenges the commission was facing, he said there had been a series of meetings and cited the example of a meeting which took place between officials of the FWSC and university workers last week Thursday and another one scheduled for yesterday.
Mr Amankrah agreed that those workers had been expected to enjoy the new salaries by the end of this month but that was not likely to happen.
He pointed out that some of the outstanding issues concerned allowances which needed to be solved in order not to create more problems on the labour front.
He gave the assurance that there was no way the government would renege on its promise to ensure that the necessary changes were made.
Mr Amankrah appealed to the aggrieved workers to understand the issues as they stood now and pointed out that migration from the old structure to the new one was not an event but a process which would need some time to complete.
Members of TEWU and GRNA have in the past few days served notice of their intention to embark on strikes if the government fails to fulfil its promise of migrating them onto the SSSS.
The workers began to agitate when news got to them that the government would honour its promise by the end of July this year, after it had failed to do that since January 2011.