The staff of Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO) have dispelled claims by their management that they rejected a 22% upward adjustment in salaries.
According to the Local Union Youth Rep for VALCO, Mr Courage Nunekpeku, who spoke for the workers, the claims are false and damaging to their reputation in the public eye.
“How will someone you work for instead of him seeking your welfare will rather want to damage you or let you look stupid in the public eye? The issue is not what they put out.”
He explained that “we went for negotiation and we agreed in principle that they were going to restore us, which is a policy in VALCO. It has to do with the dollar-to-cedi ratio.
“For instance, if my salary was Ghc1,989 which would be $337 dollars. It means that now that the dollar has shot up to Ghc12 our salary should automatically increase. So this has been the norm since 2010 between management and us since the restoration policy was instituted. Then management scrapped it without letting us know,” he explained.
Mr Nunekpeku further added that they expressed their concerns to the Chief Executive Officer who promised to direct the Human Resource Director to work on the issue.
“Later we met the Board and they were also of the opinion that, that was the best way to go and that it will be addressed in September.”
He also said, technically their salary increment is 57% and not the 22% the Management told the public.
“It is 57% restoration, in fact asking for a reduction in the first place is wrong. Because going forward quarterly whenever the dollar appreciates our salary in cedi must also change,” he added.
Background
Officials of the Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO) had revealed that staff of the firm rejected a proposed 22% salary increase describing it as insufficient.
The management said they thought it would be welcoming news to the over 300 staff at a time when the country is experiencing an economic downturn.
However, their offer was rejected, and the workers rather staged a demonstration in the early hours of Monday, October 31, 2022, refusing some management members entry into the facility.
The management further explained in a statement that it offered the 22% increment in salaries for the workers with the assurance of further increments in the future as steps are being taken to retrofit the plant.
But the workers insisted on “a 62% salary increment to the management of VALCO, and subsequently reduced it to 55%”.
Management of VALCO appealed to the workers to consider the current state of the aluminium smelter, which, for years, has been recording losses until the year 2021 where, through prudent management and better supervision, chalked some modest gains recording Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation & Amortization (EBITDA) profits.
According to management, they are hoping to build on this and retrofit and modernize the plant to improve efficiency and increase its capacity. This will see VALCO partnering with an investor to increase its production from the current 50,000 tonnes out of its 200,000 tonnes installed capacity to 300,000 tonnes of refined aluminium per year.
VALCO further indicated to the workers union executives that they would have to invite an independent arbiter in labour/industrial disputes settlement i.e. the National Labour Commission (NLC), to take up the matter after negotiations between management and the workers ended in a stalemate.
However, the workers staged a demonstration against the management, calling for better conditions of service and the immediate dismissal of some company executives who they described as ‘retirees’.
VALCO added that the continuous stay by some staff who had attained retirement age was on a contract basis. That was done because of their experience and knowledge in running the highly technical plant.
VALCO officials further explained that the workers had requested that their salaries are pegged to the dollar during negotiations.
“It is significant to clarify that the salary of the Ghanaian worker is not indexed in the USD but in our national currency, the Ghana Cedi; thus, the demands from the workers…is untenable and must be disregarded”.
The agitations of the workers led to a temporal halt in operations.