The Politicization of the Government/ Labour Relations in Ghana (1982-1992)

La politisation du gouvernement / relations de travail au Ghana (1982-1992)

Résumé

Unless authoritarian and repressive, no government in the world can claim to succeed without the support of its labour force. To be at logger heads with such a powerful partner merely means a blatant failure of any policy whatever. In the Ghana of the 1980s, this was no exception. The present paper sets out to underscore the pivotal role the Trade Union Congress played in the democratization process that gave birth to the Fourth Republic in 1992 through an intense union-state clash. Initially a labour organization whose main task was to protect the rights of the workers, the syndicate found itself driven into a political conflict with the ruling government of the time, the Provisional National Defence Council. The violations of the labour rights by the government and the backed-up International Monetary Fund reconstruction programme were the main sources of the labour grievances.