<<Print>>

The Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) has refuted claims that concerns of the Civil and Local Government Staff Association, Ghana (CLOGSAG) had not been factored into the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS). According to the Commission, claims by CLOGSAG did not add up because, like several other labour unions, the association had submitted its grievances and concerns to the FWSC, leading to a process of re-evaluation of certain categories of jobs all over again. The Executive Secretary of the FWSC, Mr George smith-Graham, told the Daily Graphic that CLOGSAG had �jumped the gun� by the position it took at a press conference it held in Accra on Tuesday. He said CLOGSAG submitted concerns on some grading and placement challenges, while other institutions had approached the FWSC to be incorporated into the SSSS. Mr Graham said all those were within the stipulated time of six months within which such concerns should be addressed and the Commission was working at that systematically, meeting labour unions, including CLOGSAG, and deliberating on their challenges to rectify all challenges by July 2010 when the first payments of the SSSS would take effect. On the claim that the FWSC had begun pushing for the implementation of the SSSS by negotiating on the base pay of the structure, he said that was not true. What the Commission was engaged in currently, he added, were consultative meetings with caucuses within labour unions to deliberate on the broad framework within which negotiations for the base salary would be done. The negotiations for the base salary, he said, would be undertaken with all the labour unions, adding that the consultative meetings were just preparatory in nature. Mr Smith-Graham said CLOGSAG had been part of those caucus meetings, although it had refused to come to a meeting where other labour unions were present, contending that it would meet the FWSC alone. He said the caucus meetings had been generally positive and the Commission was, therefore baffled by the press conference of CLOGSAG that suggested that all was not well, when that was not the case. He further explained that with the relativities or incremental steps of a worker in a particular job with the corresponding rise in income, that could not be undertaken before the base salary had been negotiated. The assertion, therefore, by CLOGSAG that it had a three per cent incremental step on its current pay structure, that is, the Ghana Universal Salary Structure (GUSS), as against a two percent incremental step on the SSSS, thus putting it at a disadvantage, was not the correct position. On Tuesday, CLOGSAG held a press conference at which it said that the implementation of the SSSS in its current form would put its members at a disadvantage. It drew attention to its concerns, some of which were the wrong placement of most of its constituents and the disadvantage in terms of salaries that the members would face if their concerns were not addressed. It charged the FWSC and the government with indifference to its concerns.