The Union of Industry, Commerce and Finance Workers (UNICOF) has described as witch hunting and unwarranted moves by management of the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB Bank) to punish workers of the bank who embarked on a sit down strike early this year.
[contextly_sidebar id=”sfkngYevCR4xz0xLS3CPTxabjRCbtj2J”]Documents cited by Citi Business News reveal about 100 workers of agricultural development bank (adb) may be transferred, suspended and in some cases sacked by the bank for embarking on sit down strike early this year.
The workers under the instruction of the Professional and Managerial Staff Union and the Local Union of the bank on May 28th this year embarked on a sit down strike to press home their demand for the resignation of the bank’s Board members and the Managing Director, Stephen Kpordzih.
The strike was also to protest “the failure of the appointing authorities to nominate external investigators to support the BoG (Bank of Ghana) to unravel the truth.”
But UNICOF says the sit down strike was sanctioned by the mother union and management of the bank has no right to punish the workers.
General Secretary of UNICOF John Esiape speaking to Citi Business News warned adb not to escalate tension within the bank as the matter is currently before the National Labour Commission (NLC).
“The directives were given by the national union, there is no need visiting this on the workers not at all I think management is getting it all wrong. Again it was not out of the blue it was during a struggle and all manner of things were happening and the mother union needed to protect its members and in any case in taken such actions it’s the mother union that gives directives. Meanwhile the very management issuing the queries has already taken the matter to the National Labour Commission and so any worker given the query will reference the mother union and once the mother union is referenced there is nothing the staff should do but revert to the mother union and if that is done there should not be any challenge.” He said.
According to John Esiape the union has been informed of rising intimidation and victimization and against workers.
“We believe management would act not to get the situation escalated, it has come to our attention that all manner of things are being done which is to intimidate and victimize staff belonging to the union and in some cases its purely witch hunting which we must not accept.
We are definitely are going to meet with our members and find a way out of this peacefully but where peace is unattainable then we will have to advise ourselves”.
General Secretary of UNICOF John Esiape said.
Meanwhile efforts to get the bank to respond to the matter proved futile as text messages and calls to the Head of legal and Executive Head of HR of the bank were not responded to.
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By: citifmonline.com/Ghana
