‘COVID-19 presents opportunity to review Labour Act’

An Associate at Bentsi-Enchill, Letsa and Ankomah, Mrs Dzifa Vanderpuye, has said the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic presents a good opportunity for the review of the Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651).

According to her, many attempts to review the law had not been successful in the past, although there were provisions within the Act that required some ammendments to make it relevant in modern times.

She cited, for instance, the issue of redundancy, saying, “Under the Ghanaian law, redundancy is a negotiated payment so if the parties do not agree at the beginning of the employment that if I’m declaring redundancy, then you are going home with one-month salary for every year served, normally when the event actually occurs, there is always a dispute.

“Because the employee is asking for 12 months’ salary for every year served, which is like paying him for all the years he has ever worked, while the employer is offering two-week salary for every year served.

“You can see the gap. It can go all the way down to six months, four months and the employer says I can’t pay and the employee says this is what I want. There is always a dispute and they always end up at the National Labour Commission in relation to this,” she said.

Mrs Vanderpuye made the submissions when she appeared as a guest on “GraphicTalks”, a special Graphic Business interview programme, which was hosted by Charles Benoni Okine, Assistant Editor of the paper, live online on Tuesday.

The legal associate, who was on the show with a Human Resource and Labour Expert, Dr Jeffery Bassey, discussed issues on the theme; ‘Rescuing employment contracts in times of disruptions.”

She said in other jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom, there were specific provisions for redundancy, which was normally determined by certain factors, including age.

In such instances, she explained that redundancy payment was set and the employer could not pay less than what was provided for in the law.

Labour, management, cooperation

Dr Bassey, who also corroborated the call for a review of portions of the Labour Law, advised employers to come out with cogent policies that sought to cover a lot of the areas that probably were not spoken to with specifics because the mind of the drafters of the law was to probably give room for the employer and the employee to have an engagement.

“So, maybe rather than repealing or changing too many things in our Labour Act, let employers and employees give room for labourer-management cooperation (LMC) to resolve their disagreements and to have better contracts and processes that govern the place of work,” he said.

Seeking legal action

The forum deduced that COVID-19 had caused significant changes in human resource operations or the way organisations were being run, such that while some were not ready for the eventuality, others may have already done a lot of their human resource operations through digitisation and other online platforms.

Dr Bassey said many organisations had experienced significant changes during the COVID-19 period with the result that employers were now focusing more on the pandemic.

He advised employees to engage in talks with their employers before seeking to file a suit in court.

“Resorting to Legality should be the last course of action. You go through negotiation. All parties must tie-up on effective negotiation and engagement,” he said.

He noted that COVID-19 had now limited performance management to weekly deliverables unlike previously when there were quarterly and annual assessments.

Dr Bassey said people were working remotely from home and there was the need to devise other means such as weekly deliverables of assessment to avoid laxity.