There have been many industrial unrest as a result of some government workers claiming to be denied of the interim market premium instituted by the government some years back.
One of such strikes is the one embarked on by CLOSSAG, which the National Labour Commission has described as illegal yet the government is appealing to them to go back to work since if their demands are granted, it may throw the national budget out of gear.
Now the question one may ask is; with all these strikes caused by public sector workers linked to market premiums, who should the blame be attributed to?
To answer this question, it is important to look at why an employer may introduce a market premium. The purpose of market premium is to attract the critical skills that an employer needs by way of competing favourably on the labour market.
The Fair Wages and Salaries Commission of Ghana, which seeks to ensure equity and attract critical skills on the labour market, has not done much in terms of the implementation of market premium to attract the needed manpower in the public sector.
In every organisation, critical skills are tied to the organisation’s short and long term objectives and it is the employer who determines the critical skills it needs to achieve these objectives. Making market premium wholesale is like the employer, for that matter the government, not knowing its priority areas.
In the health sector for example, the categorisation of medical doctors is; consultants, senior specialists, specialists/chief medical officer, principal medical officer, senior medical officer, medical officer and house officer. The determination of market premium of these classes of workers should be based on their scarcity.
How many specialists do we have as compared to medical officers to attract the same market premium? This means that the government will be right if it decides to differentiate the quantum of market premium paid to specialists and medical officers in the health sector based on scarcity and difficulty in attracting each of these classes.
The CLOSSAG strike over failure of the government to adhere to their interim market premium is technically deficient since scarcity of manpower is determined by the employer and not the employees or their representatives. On the other hand, they may have a legitimate case on fair grounds based on the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission making wholesale.
If workers in the health service, universities as well as other sectors will be granted market premium, then it is only fair that the commission should determine scarcity or critical skills of certain classes of manpower within the civil and local government and grant them market premium accordingly.
The writer is a Director, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Kumasi Polytechnic.
