Scrap Market Premium, it doesn’t make sense – Austin Gamey
Labour and Alternative Dispute Resolution consultant, Mr Austin Gamey is livid with the almost wholesale implementation of Market Premium in the country and wants the government and the Fair Wages and Salary Structure administrators to stop the practice forthwith.
It is a “strange phenomenon”, “absolutely wrong” and “sickening”, and should not be allowed to continue, he told Radio Gold in Accra Monday while addressing issues on government’s rising wage bills and mounting industrial actions in the country.
According to Mr. Gamey, also a Human Resource solutions provider, market premium is implemented the world over as an ad-hoc measure to spur critically needed but insufficiently available skills to work.
It has never been part of regular wage factors. It is either an absolute figure or some interim arrangement made to compensate for the critical skills in short supply. It is also decided by the employer based on prevailing factors and never a negotiable item.
“What is happening in Ghana is a very strange phenomenon and I don’t know where the people who put it together (got it from), I don’t know who thought them, who told them what to do and they are doing them. I refuse to understand it. I guarantee you that whatever they are doing is absolutely wrong and must be stopped immediately”, he said.
Mr. Gamey maintained that market premium is paid to only critical skills that are in demand and are unavailable, however what is going on in Ghana is a strange thing.
“I don’t know where they got it from”, he insisted, saying “It must be stopped because it’s not written anywhere… You cannot pay people based on their pay and call it market premium, you distort the salary structure. It is not done anywhere. It is strange and sickening and I don’t know what they meant by that.
“If they don’t stop it, it means they have money, they should go ahead and do it.”
Civil and Local Government Staff Association of Ghana (CLOGSAG) are the latest group of workers to join in the long list of sections of Ghana’s labour force aggrieved over the implementation of the SSSS pay policy that was expected to sanitise salary administration. Its implementation has however seen one strife after the other.
Written by Isaac Yeboah/Graphic.com.gh/Ghana