The Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) is insisting that, the decision by Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) workers union to break away from ICU is illegal and a breach of the union’s Constitution.
According to its General Secretary, Solomon Kotei, in an exclusive interview with New Crusading GUIDE, the constitution allows members to leave individually but not as a group as the Supreme Consultative Council of COCOBOD are making the workers to do.
“We can’t say people should not leave ICU but if you want to leave the ICU, it has a constitution, which says you leave individually and not in a set”, Mr. Kotei quoted.
He said aside the formation of the COCOBOD workers union being illegally constituted because it is not registered with the Chief Labour Officer, the council was using force means to coerce their members to exit ICU against their will, according to information they have.
“Those who spoke against the intimidation, got immediate transfer from the head office to rural areas where they would become idle because there is almost nothing there to do there”, he added.
The ICU General Secretary accused their leader Alhaji Idris Hassan of his inability to hold himself as their leader, given that he was a retiree and contract workers were not recognized under the ICU constitution of which he was a member.
“The two national Union have retired him so in which capacity does he hold himself as the Union chairperson”, he stated.
Mr. Kotei pointed out that the failure for COCOBOD to allow ICU to conduct elections for its members, and also to negotiate salaries as well as allowances when time was due, has caused the beef between them.
“COCOBOD Union refused to respond to letters and reminders sent to them to allow us come for negotiations and elections, yet the Chief Executive Officer chose a retiree to go announce an increase which hitherto was a collective agreement which is due for negotiations”, Mr. Kotei posited.
He cautioned the COCOBOD union to go according to the constitution saying “in any society where there is no law, anarchy and chaos is what you find”.
A quite surprised Alhaji Idris Hassan, Chairman of the Supreme Consultative Council of COCOBOD for his part said the union had all the constitutional rights to break away from ICU because it was not the first time a union was breaking away from ICU.
He recalled the breakaway of Textile workers to form the Textile Workers Union and workers of Agriculture Development Bank in UNICOF during his time as the chairman of ICU, adding that “even ICU broke away from the Trade Union Congress (TUC)”.
The Chairman indicated that the workers Union at COCOBOD decided to break away from ICU because of mistrust and a further display which discloses that the ICU did not have their interest at heart.
Alhaji cited the General Secretary’s support for Cocoa Marketing Company’s privatization in 2011 which was would have collapsed COCOBOD, his advice to workers to bargain salaries without allowances and the “intentional” delay tactics played by ICU and GAWU to endorse the accepted in house salary negotiations to cause labour unrest.
He maintained that their decision for the breakaway was taken on 2nd December 2015 at a Supreme Council meeting held at Bonsu in the Eastern Region, after which 3 months’ notice served the ICU elapsed on April 13th 2016.
According to him, it is left with some few months for 6 months’ notice given GAWU as prescribed by their constitution to pass by as well.
Responding to the allegations of intimidating workers and transferring them upon agitation, the Alhaji Hassan held that printing the forms for COCOBOD workers was a general format done everywhere including ICU, hence it was nothing new.
Touching on the transfer, he explained that it is contained in the consultative agreement signed by the General Secretary of ICU himself that workers could be transferred anywhere within COCOBOD’s operation, therefore there was no breach anywhere.
Alhaji Hassan also made it known that he wrote that letter of notice to ICU and GAWU when he was a legitimate worker at COCOBOD so the issue of he not being able to hold himself as the Union chairman did not hold given that they were no longer under ICU’s conditionality.
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