In a national drive towards enhancing productivity, Ben Arthur, a labour expert has called for the adoption of an hourly pay system in Ghana to replace the National Daily Minimum Wage.
According to him, the hourly pay system stands to offer more benefit to both workers and employers.
Mr Arthur, a civil engineer, in an interview with ADR Daily in Accra, said the hourly pay ensures that both productivity and remuneration are enhanced.
“For Ghana to be effective and efficient in productivity, we must reform the National Daily Minimum Wage into an hourly pay system,” he said.
He noted that, when workers are paid by the hour, their performance is effectively monitored and evaluated, while workers give off their best in completing more tasks to secure more pay.
Unlike the hourly pay system, he said the daily minimum wage regime is a disincentive to productivity since it is difficult to match performance or productivity to pay.
Justifying the need for a paradigm shift in the wage payment system in Ghana, he said Section 33 of the Labour Act 2003 (Act 651) recognizes that work should be performed in a specific number of hours on which wage should be calculated. “The International Labour Organisation (ILO) classifies work as being an employment for an average of two hours a day and explained that with the ILO and the Labour Law, work is tracked based on hours.
“If we want to match salaries to productivity, then we would need the smallest unit to measure productivity, and a day is too large a unit to measure,” he said.
He stated that the hourly rate system is already employed in the Ghanaian economy because overtime pay is calculated on an hourly basis since an hour is the smallest denominator to calculate overtime.
“And so if overtime being excess work is calculated by an hour then the main work should also be calculated by an hour so that when there is an issue of overtime, the overtime hours would be added to the main work hours without the need to have collective bargaining to determine the exact pay,” he added.
Mr Arthur added that the hourly pay system could be used in all sectors of the economy to manage worker output effectively. If a worker is employed for five hours a day, the worker is aware of the expectation of the employer and so if the worker is unable to produce any results then the pay for the five hours will be reduced.
The hourly pay system works in such a way that the wages of the worker are paid according to the time spent at work and the task performed.
The hourly pay system is employed in over 50 countries including the USA, Britain and Japan.
By: Fred Gadese-Mensah/adrdaily.com