The Political Economy of Industrial Relations in Ghana

Abstract

Since 1939, at least, a growing number of wage or salary workers in Ghana (the Gold Coast until 1957) have been organising themselves in trade unions in order to augment their collective capacity to acquire a larger share of the resources they create and to participate in decisions affecting the political economy. This attempt to alter the workers-union relationship with the private sector and the state — as the largest employer — has been marked by tension, conflict and coercion as well as some co-operation. Industrial relations often have the quality of an uneasy and armed truce, in which there is scant acceptance at the level of social belief in the changing laws, regulations, and institutional mechanisms which link labour, private employers, and the state. There have been five governments in Ghana since 1939: the colonial government until 1951 and in attenuated form until 1957; the Nkrumah regime, 1951–66; the military National Liberation Council (NLC*), 1966–69; the Progress Party government of Kofi Busia, 1969–72; and the military National Redemption Council (NRC) since 1972. It is not simply that the frequent changes in regime have forced new decisions and terms in the relationships of workers and unions to both the private sector employer and the state. The terms and mechanisms of these relations have changed frequently during these regimes, been altered politically and often coercively, and have not been stabilised in fact or in the beliefs of those involved.