Justice Yankson has asked the government to stop making workers go on strike before keeping their promises.

Following the recent nurses’ strike that halted healthcare facilities across the country, the former general secretary of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has strongly criticized the government for how it handles labor agreements with professional associations.

When Dr. Justice Yankson spoke on Joy FM’s Newsfile show, he was blunt: “Once the government agrees on something with professional bodies, it just honors it.”

His remarks were made while the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) put a halt to their walkout in order to engage in additional talks.

Using his over twenty years of labor bargaining experience, Dr. Yankson identified a concerning trend in government-worker relations:

“The moment you go into the details proper and see the trajectory that they may have traversed up till today, the nuances, the discussions, the disagreements and all of it, then you begin to realize that no we need to pause, have a good and critical look at their issues and resolve them.”

“From where I sit and the experience I’ve had in the day by day field for pretty close to 20 years dealing with some of these issues, I’m very clear in my mind that most of the time, labor gets to this point as a result of a seeming inadequate engagement between the employer and labor,” he said, expressing frustration at the ongoing cycle of industrial actions.

The medical expert described how years of broken promises had left workers on the verge of collapse:

“I realized that in most cases, the workers give enough room, sometimes years, to the employer to do what is right, and it gets to a point they are forced to take actions like this.”

The government’s last-minute crisis resolution strategy was questioned by Dr. Yankson.

“When the actions happen, the engagements sometimes don’t even improve, for days before they come to the table and say, look, let’s look at things properly, and within hours to maximum, a day, or sometimes two, the issues are resolved so I always ask myself, why do we wait till we get to that end.”