Strikes cripple Ghana
Socialist Press1978 1978-11-15Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 2 →
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The leaders of the world's largest trade union are once again caught on a large (and very sharp) hook.
This time Eugen Loderer and the other bureaucrats of the West German metal workers union IG-Metall are Demonstration in Tehran 'National consensus' was the cant spouting from the lips • of Ghana's military dictators seven months ago.
They spelt out the meaning of this patriotic phrase more fuily last week by declaring a state of emergency to crush more than 80 militant strikes in the public sector.
In March, the generals rigged referendum votes to produca a majority in favour of their proposed 'Union Government'. Now they have suspended even the petty democratic rights conceded by the dictatorship.
General Akuffo explained how "disappointed' he was that 70,000 workers had taken strike action, and went on to announce that strikes and damage to property had now become criminal acts against the security of the state.
The strikes had already para¡lysed crucial sections of the Ghanaian economy, including the docks, when the government sacked over 20,000 of the strikers.
As the generals began to recruit scab replacements from the huge reserve army of unemployed and impoverished workers, the trade union bureaucracy slammed into reverse gear.
On Friday, they issued a grovelling plea that they had not "meant to undermine authority' by failing to order an immediate return to work.
But now that the dictatorship had agreed to set up a permanent arbitration board with the Civil Servants' Association, they could call the strike off.
The real consensus' whic.. Akuffo represents is between the generals and world imperialism on how best to continue exploiting the proletariat and other oppressed masses of Ghana.
In their fight to blow that gentleman's agreement apart, Ghanaian workers will have to begin by replacing the labour bureaucrats of today with a leadership prepared to fight and lead their revolutionary struggles.
humiliating concessions.
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union chiefs face crisis