Organised Labour has reduced its base pay demand from 60% to 58%.

This happened after their last meeting with the government on Tuesday, December 13. However, the meeting ended inconclusively with both parties failing to come to an agreement.

Deputy General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Joshua Ansah, who spoke to JoyNews after the meeting said they will insist that whatever is agreed will not be below the minimum wage.

“Our proposal is in about four-folds. Our proposal says that base pay should not be less than the minimum wage. As we speak now, base pay is less than the minimum wage. So we are asking government to bring base pay to the minimum wage level which gives us about 33.3%.

“Again, there is an agreement that base pay should be 10% higher than the minimum wage, and when that is done it will bring it a little bit higher than the minimum wage. When you add that percentage difference to the 33.3 % it gives you about 44.1%. And when you put all these demands together, you are up there,” he said.

He further clarified that the leaders of the Union do not want their members to enter next year with their old salary since the agreement on the Cost of Living Allowances (COLA) will end this December.

Organised labour for a while now, has been negotiating with the government for its base pay for next year.

About four meetings with the government have all ended inconclusively with the Union refusing to accept the government’s proposal of an 18% increase in their base pay.

Prior to the current 58%, Organised Labour previously revised its demand for an increase in the base pay to 65% from 60%.

This new percentage was proposed on Wednesday, November 30 when they met the government for the fourth time since negotiations started.

According to them, the new figure was arrived at because of the tax rate increases announced in the 2023 budget.

Meanwhile, negotiations have been postponed to December 19, 2022.