Cases of unfair termination of employment top the number of disputes filed with the National Labour Commission (NLC).
A total of 1,898 unfair terminations cases, representing 28.3 percent of the total number of 7,449 disputes, were filed at the Commission between 2005 and 2015.
The high number of unfair termination cases brings into sharp focus the effectiveness in the application of Sections 62 – 65 of the Labour Act 2003, Act 651, and the level of involvement of Human Resource Managers in managing such cases to prevent them from developing into workplace disputes.
Statistics from the Commission show that unfair termination is followed by 1,804 disputes relating to leave, maternity leave and transfers which accounted for 24.2 percent of the cases.
A total of 1,605 disputes over summary dismissals representing 21.5 percent were recorded over the period.
The statistics show that an average of 748 cases were filed annually at the rate of 56 complaints monthly, while the total number of cases involved over 3.5 million complainants from both public and private institutions.
Other cases recorded include unpaid and delayed salaries (624cases, 8.3 percent), Redundancy and severance (516 cases, 6.9 percent), Retirement benefit variations (388, 5.2 percent), Workman’s compensation (191 cases, 2.5 percent) and Strikes concerning poor remuneration and collective bargaining agreement (108 cases, 1.4 percent).
Some of the cases involved disputes relating to unilateral decisions during negotiations, lack of clear meaning/differentiation between the different types of contract and their treatment, unionization disputes, non-recognition of unions by employers, non-adherence to the process of unionization by unions and issuance of Collective Bargaining Certificates (CBC’s), protracted and undue delays in negotiations, capacity of persons leading negotiation teams to deal with matters decisively, and poor communication between some managers and their workers in the employment relationship.
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By Nii Adotey /adrdaily.com
