The leadership of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG), having listened to public opinion and softened its stance, awaiting further response from government and its stakeholders, appears to have drawn the anger of its membership.
This is notwithstanding the fact that it is union leadership that employers deal with and not large indistinct groups.
Fortunately, the griping members have not accused the leadership of having taken bribes, as some political communicators accused motor transport unions of doing during negotiations with government over a proposed thirty percent increase in transport fares.
Noise
If it is just for the sake of sustaining the decibel, then we believe the noisemakers may have other agenda than a peaceful, constructive negotiation that mutually benefits UTAG members, our kids in the universities as well as the government, which is struggling to give every worker his or her piece of the pie at the beginning of every year.
To suggest that the leaders gave away so much and didn’t really conduct the game of negotiations to the hilt is to suggest that the leaders were weak, and did not get to the table with the right demands.
The sore point in all these is that while students are putting themselves together to return to the classroom to make up for lost time, we have another needless fight within that adds to the disruption and distraction in seeking for an abiding solution to the lingering impasse.
Favour
As the entire UTAG membership would agree, the Association has optimum regard and favour among the population. So far, those who want government to look into their grievances are more than those disdaining their stance as a tolerant union of professionals abreast of the stress on the national economy.
That, in our opinion, is enough motivation for the UTAG members to ‘wipe their tears’ and go back to the classroom as stakeholders hurry up and tie up the knotty points in their conditions of service and promptly pay them.
It is refreshing that even the students appreciate their plight and the need for government to look critically into their grievances in proffering a one-time solution to their recurring agitation.
Politics
It is sad that in our part of the world when issues like these crop up, illiterate and irresponsible politicians wade in, and attempt to make political capital out of a tricky bread and butter situation, though in most cases they miss out on proposals on the way forward in a neutral manner.
During the anti-E-Levy demonstration, for instance, we heard clearly political individuals and groups seeking to add the national headache of the UTAG strike to the so-called failures they accuse government of, though a more professional and rational argument would have been the equally critical issue of revenue mobilisation, as captured succinctly in the E-Levy proposal.
Appeal
It is at this point that we join the leadership of UTAG in urging the membership to hope against all hope and return to the classroom to take the kids through the remaining academic calendar in our collective interest.
Clearly, they have a case. Pushing it too far, however, would mean that they are taking a belligerent, instead of amicable, posture at a time when we are asking all Ghanaians, most of whom largely unlettered, to bite the bullet in reconstructing our economy for a better tomorrow.
As the head of the UTAG negotiating team noted in his statement, there is still enough time for UTAG to sustain the negotiation and seal the deal amicably, without raising hairs and further rocking the academic calendar.
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