SOCIALIST FORUM OF GHANA 2021 MAY DAY STATEMENT WORKERS OF GHANA UNITE!!!

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On May Day, 2021, the Socialist Forum of Ghana salutes working people everywhere for the
tenacity of struggle that continues to point the way to a brighter future for all mankind despite
the many existential challenges driven by the greed and recklessness of the global capitalist
class –inequality, hunger, disease climate disaster, to name just a few.

Unionized workers manned the frontline of our National Liberation struggle with their
participation in the industrial strikes of 1948 and Positive Action in 1950s and other
manifestations. Unions achieved the Industrial Relations Act of 1958 and 1965; the Social
Security Act of 1965, the right to strike, maternity leave for women, and equal pay for equal
work for all working people irrespective of Gender. The TUC of the immediate post independence era sponsored thousands of Ghanaian students abroad to acquire various

specialties, skills and qualifications which enhanced the human resource base of our country.
Today, we appeal to our working-class comrades in Ghana to commit to strategic,
internationalist, class unity and to heightened struggle. We are struggling in a neo-liberal
economy that breeds unemployment and exports jobs abroad and that use macro-economic
indicators like inflation to erode further the miserable and poor conditions of service of the
working People of Ghana This is the condition for the working class to resume leadership of
Ghana’s progressive movement. We call on Unions leaders to extend a true hand of
brotherhood to each other and overcome the historical, organizational, and bureaucratic
differences that have led to a fragmented Labor front. Union “divisionism” today is a tactical
victory for our exploiters. It must be reversed. Constitutional freedom of assembly must be
used strategically to strengthen rather than weaken our cause.

Together our Unions can expand their ranks and organize to protect all the sections of the
working class whose pay, living conditions, leisure and social security have been savagely
attacked by outsourcing and casualization schemes blessed by Government. United, workers
can fruitfully engage all the sections of the working class whose supposed self-employment
and independence is a ruse that allows Capital to exploit them more intensely – forcing them to
engage with corporations as relatively powerless individuals rather than as collectives of
technical workers and in the process to lose some of the gains that workers have secured
through decades of relentless struggle.

Together workers can elevate above the economism of isolated struggles with specific
employers backed by the neocolonial state which hobbles these struggles by denying workers
their principal industrial weapon – the strike – through tedious processes of the National Labor
Commission, Fair Wages Commission, and National Tripartite Committee negotiations.
Together workers can develop a full strategic political struggle that responds effectively to such
political structures that prop up the intensifying regime of exploitation we face. SOCIALIST FORUM OF GHANA (SFG)
www.socialistforumofghana.org

Together workers can energize the global struggle that is required to topple imperialist
exploitation of labour everywhere. Only a united global working-class movement can counter
the increasingly globalised and coordinated onslaught of capitalism/imperialism and usher in
a just and productive society where each can work creatively and enjoy the full benefits of his
or her labour.
On this occasion, we remind ourselves of the gallant struggles of the workers of Chicago, USA
on May 3, 1886 which provided the inspiration for the declaration of May 1 as International
Workers’ Day. we pledge to follow in the heroic traditions of these courageous workers and
assure that their sacrifices and the sacrifices of all workers engaged in the struggle against
imperialism will not be in vain.

SFG stands with the workers of Ghana in their quest to build a fairer and more prosperous
world. We believe in the possibility of a world where work is not a source of misery and
exploitation by a tiny global elite but of pride and fulfilment for all. We believe as a matter of
history that this state of society can only be achieved by the political mobilization of working
people. In the immortal words of the Communist Manifesto we “Workers of the World, Unite!
You have nothing to lose but your chains!
Long live the working people of the world
Long live the working people of Ghana
Long live May Day.
Justice Henaku
For Convener

Below is the full statement: