Presentation to a Meeting of Leaders of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) of Ghana On Thursday, August 25, 2026.
By Kwesi Pratt Jnr. General Secretary, Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG)
Chairperson, Secretary-General of the Trades Union Congress, leaders of the affiliate unions, comrades, brothers and sisters, I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this discussion on Citizenship in the hope that it may help to define the broad parameters of the role of trade unions in the national development effort .
At first sight, citizenship and class struggle appear to belong to two different conversations. Citizenship appears to belong to constitutional law: who belongs to the Republic, what rights the citizen enjoys, what obligations the citizen bears and what relationship exists between the citizen and the state. Class struggle appears to belong to political economy: who owns, who works, who produces, who accumulates and who exercises power.
Chairperson, my argument is simple. These two questions cannot be separated.
A Constitution may proclaim that all citizens are equal. But if one citizen owns the mine and another descends underground every morning to work in that mine for a wage; if one citizen owns the bank and another spends half a lifetime servicing a loan from that bank; if one citizen can influence policy through wealth while another fears losing a job simply for joining a trade union, then we must ask: what exactly does equality of citizens mean?
WHAT IS CITIZENSHIP?
At its simplest, citizenship is legal membership of a political community. It establishes a relationship between the individual and the state. It carries rights, protections, duties and opportunities for participation. But that definition is not enough. Meaningful citizenship must ask whether citizens possess the material capacity to enjoy the rights which the law gives them. A person may have the right to vote and still have no meaningful influence over the economic decisions determining whether he has a job. A worker may formally have freedom of association and still face victimisation for organising. A poor citizen may be equal before the law and yet be unable to afford the lawyer required to defend that equality. This is the distinction between formal citizenship and substantive citizenship. Formal citizenship gives us the passport, the vote and equality before the law. Substantive citizenship asks whether citizens can actually secure work, food, housing, education, healthcare, social protection, dignity and a fair share of the wealth produced in society.
Our 1992 Constitution makes a powerful declaration: “The Sovereignty of Ghana resides in the people of Ghana.” That is not decorative language. If sovereignty truly resides in the people, then citizenship cannot mean merely deciding every four years which section of the political elite will administer the state. It must also raise the question of whether the people have meaningful power over the resources, institutions and economic decisions on which their lives depend.
WHAT IS CLASS STRUGGLE?
Class is fundamentally about our relationship to the means through which society produces its wealth. There are those who own or control significant capital, land, factories, mines, banks and commercial enterprises. There are others who own very little beyond their capacity to work and therefore must sell their labour in order to survive. That difference produces conflicting interests. The employer wants to control labour costs. The worker wants a better wage. Capital seeks a higher return. Workers demand safer conditions, secure employment, better pensions and shorter working hours. Private investors may seek the privatisation of a profitable public asset. Citizens may require that same asset to remain a public service. That is class struggle. Socialists did not invent it by speaking about it. Nkrumah put the point sharply in Class Struggle in Africa: “A fierce class struggle has been raging in Africa.” He described its essence as a struggle between “the oppressors and the oppressed.” We see class struggle in wage negotiations, strikes, pension disputes, privatisation, taxation, public expenditure and the distribution of national resources. It is the continuous contest over who gets what, who controls what, who pays for crisis and who determines the direction of society. So the central question becomes unavoidable: can people be equal citizens politically while belonging to profoundly unequal classes economically?
CITIZENSHIP: REPUBLIC AND MONARCHY
Under traditional monarchical dispensations, political authority was associated with the sovereign or Crown, and the individual was historically conceived as a subject owing allegiance to that sovereign. Modern constitutional monarchies have changed greatly, but the philosophical contrast remains useful.
Republicanism on the other hand, locates the ultimate source of legitimate political authority in the people. We do not belong to the President. The President belongs to the Republic. Parliament does not own sovereignty. Members of Parliament exercise powers temporarily entrusted to them by citizens. Ministers are not rulers standing above the people. They exercise authority that originates from the people. That is the radical promise of republican citizenship. Ghana became a Republic in 1960. But if political sovereignty belongs to Ghanaians, what happens when significant economic power over Ghana lies elsewhere? What does popular sovereignty mean when strategic sectors of the economy are dominated by interests that ordinary citizens do not control? Can a people be politically sovereign while remaining economically dependent?
Nkrumah warned us about precisely this contradiction. In Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, he wrote that a state may appear independent while, “in reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.” Political citizenship without economic sovereignty can therefore become a shell.
THE GHANAIAN ECONOMY AND ORGANISED LABOUR
The Chairperson, let us bring the discussion home. Ghana’s economy still bears the marks of colonial construction. We export gold, cocoa, oil and other primary commodities, while importing large quantities of machinery, technology, refined products and manufactured goods. We create wealth, but too often the highest value is added elsewhere. There have been important recent improvements in the macroeconomy. Inflation fell sharply during 2025, public debt ratios declined and growth strengthened. We should acknowledge that. But macroeconomic recovery is not the same thing as working-class prosperity. The worker does not eat GDP growth. Falling inflation does not mean prices return to where they were. A stronger currency does not automatically create a job for a young person.
The Ghana Statistical Service reported that national unemployment averaged 12.8 per cent over the first three quarters of 2025. Among young people aged 15 to 35, unemployment averaged 21.9 per cent. Earlier GSS data also showed that informal-sector employment accounted for 87 per cent of employment in 2023. That last number should trouble every trade union leader. It means the traditional model of organising workers in large factories, public institutions and clearly defined workplaces reaches only a fraction of Ghana’s working population. Millions work in markets, on farms, on construction sites, behind steering wheels, in homes, in small workshops and increasingly on digital platforms. Capital has changed. The labour movement must change too.
Outsourcing divides workers who once shared one workplace among multiple contractors. Casualisation transfers risk from the employer to the worker. Digital platforms label workers as independent contractors while algorithms determine their earnings. Automation and artificial intelligence promise higher productivity but can also destroy jobs and concentrate wealth when workers have no voice in how technology is introduced. These are not merely employment questions. They are citizenship questions. The worker who spends ten years on renewable three-month contracts does not experience citizenship in the same way as the shareholder collecting dividends. The unemployed graduate and the billionaire may each possess one vote, but nobody should pretend that they possess equal economic power.
RESOLVING THE CONTRADICTION
How then do we resolve the contradiction between equality promised by citizenship and inequality produced by class society? Certainly not merely by adding more beautiful words to the Constitution. Constitutions matter. Rights matter. Rule of law matters. Political freedom matters. Workers must be among the strongest defenders of democratic rights because working people usually suffer most when those rights disappear. But political democracy must be accompanied by economic democracy.
Freedom of association must mean the practical ability to organise without intimidation. The right to work must inform national development policy. Equality must find expression in access to education, healthcare, housing and social protection. Natural resources must serve national development. Taxation must be progressive. Workers must have a meaningful voice in the management of pensions and social security. Strategic public assets must not be disposed of simply because private interests identify an opportunity for profit.
We must also confront the state itself. The state is often presented as though it floats above society without class interests. But wealth finances politics. Wealth owns media. Wealth employs lobbyists, consultants and advisers. Wealth gains access to decision-makers. Democratic citizenship therefore requires organised citizens capable of counter balancing concentrated economic power. For working people, that organisation is the trade union.
THE HISTORIC RESPONSIBILITY OF ORGANISED LABOUR
This brings me directly to the responsibility of the Trades Union Congress. The TUC cannot define its purpose only around periodic wage negotiations. Wages are vital. But labour must also ask why wages permanently chase the cost of living. Who determines taxation? Who shapes the national budget? Who negotiates debt agreements? Who decides privatisation? Who owns the strategic resources? Who benefits from technological change? Nkrumah once told organised labour: “Our Trade Unions, therefore, have an important role to play in the reconstruction of Ghana.” That responsibility has not expired. If anything, it has become more urgent.
First, organised labour must become a centre of independent economic analysis, political education and national development advocacy. The TUC and its affiliates need the capacity to interrogate budgets, tax proposals, debt agreements, IMF programmes, pension reforms, privatisation proposals, trade agreements and labour-market changes before workers are asked to carry their consequences. We cannot challenge policies we do not understand.
Second, organised labour must organise beyond the formal workplace. The market woman is a worker. The farmer is a worker. The artisan is a worker. The driver is a worker. The delivery rider controlled by an algorithm is a worker. The labour movement of the future must find forms of organisation capable of embracing these millions of citizens.
Third, labour must put industrialisation and productive employment back at the centre of national politics. Ghana cannot build prosperity by exporting raw materials indefinitely. Gold must build Ghanaian productive capacity. Cocoa must support Ghanaian manufacturing. Oil, gas and new minerals must create domestic value chains, technology and skilled jobs. We cannot repeat extraction, export and dependency and call it development.
Fourth, workers must defend universal public services. Healthcare, education, water, transport, electricity, housing and social security are not luxuries to be distributed according to purchasing power. They are part of the material foundation of meaningful citizenship.
Fifth, organised labour must confront technology politically. Artificial intelligence and automation can shorten working time, eliminate dangerous work and raise productivity. But under unequal ownership they can also produce unemployment and concentrate wealth. The question is not whether technology will advance. It will. The question is: who will own it, who will control it and who will receive the benefits?
Finally, Ghanaian workers must rediscover Pan-African and international labour solidarity. Capital moves across borders. Multinational corporations negotiate across borders. Finance crosses borders in seconds. Workers cannot remain trapped within national isolation while capital organises globally.
CONCLUSION
Comrades, citizenship is not simply a legal identity. It is a struggle over power. It is a struggle over resources. It is a struggle over dignity. The eight-hour day was fought for. Paid leave was fought for. Pensions were fought for. Collective bargaining was fought for. Political democracy itself was expanded by generations of ordinary people who organised and struggled. The history of citizenship is therefore inseparable from the history of class struggle.
The task before organised labour is to ensure that the worker does not remain a sovereign citizen in the political republic and a powerless subject in the economic order. Our Republic promises political equality. The labour movement must struggle to give that promise material meaning: productive work; wages that guarantee dignity; national resources used for national development; education and healthcare treated as rights; pensions protected; and working people given a real voice in determining how the wealth they create is used. Citizenship must move from the passport to the workplace, from the ballot box to the economy, and from constitutional declaration to material reality.
The historic responsibility of organised labour is not merely to negotiate the terms under which workers survive. It is to participate actively in constructing the conditions under which all citizens can live with dignity.
That is the connection between citizenship and class struggle. And that, Chairperson, is the unfinished task before the Ghanaian working class.
Thank you.