The Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) has appealed to the Government to review the law on tax on overtime work to make it more appealing to workers.
Encouraging more people to do overtime, the Union said, would increase productivity and progress the national economy.
Mr. Solomon Kotei, General Secretary of ICU, made the appeal in a message read for him by Mr. Ebenezer Antwi, Western Regional Officer of the Union, at a news conference to mark the maiden World Precarious Workers Day, at Takoradi.
The essence of the day was to bring to the attention of the government, employers, civil society organizations, advocates of justice and equality, workers and the public the injustice and deprivation being meted out to this class of workers.
Precarious work, he explained, included on site contracting of labour, hiring of labour through agencies or brokers, outsourcing of labour, contractualization of labour, casualization of labour and all forms of employment that are not permanent or direct.
Mr. Kotei said under the Labour Act, overtime work was not obligatory except where the nature of work required the extra service to become viable.
He said the Union considered overtime work as mutual arrangement between the employer and the worker to work extra hours after the mandatory eight hours of work in a working day.
“This, we believe, is to enable the employer meet production target, which otherwise could not be met in an eight hour working day,” he explained.
However, he said some employers were abusing the intended application of the privilege of casualization and were giving ‘ a permanent status to its usage in contravention of the labour law. ‘
Mr. Kotei said some workers had worked under precarious conditions in some organizations continuously for 10 years without being confirmed as permanent; a blatant breach of the Labour Act.
He expressed regret that such employers were acting contrary to the International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, which demanded equal remuneration for equal pay and abhorred discrimination in employment and occupation.
Mr. Kotei said Ghana had ratified both conventions and this made it obligatory for every employer in the country to abide by them.
