More than 60,000 Ghanaian civil servants and local government workers withdrew their services this morning after the Civil and Local Government Staff Association of Ghana (CLOGSAG) proceeded with a nationwide strike, defying a directive from the National Labour Commission (NLC) that declared the action illegal.
The NLC ordered CLOGSAG to halt the planned industrial action, citing the union’s failure to comply with mandatory legal requirements under the Labour Act 2003 (Act 651), and summoned both CLOGSAG leadership and government representatives to an emergency hearing on Wednesday, 11 March 2026. The union’s leadership was unmoved. CLOGSAG’s Public Relations Officer, Edmund Acquaye, confirmed the strike would proceed as planned, urging members across ministries, departments and district assemblies to stay home.
The action caps a dispute that has been building since 2019. Negotiations on a revised unique salary structure resulted in the signing of two separate Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with government representatives, with implementation originally set for January 1, 2023, later pushed to January 1, 2025. That deadline passed without any action.
CLOGSAG Executive Secretary Isaac Bampoe Addo has also criticised what he described as selective implementation under the previous administration. He alleged that former Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta approved the salary arrangements for staff within the Finance Ministry while excluding the rest of the civil service, leaving the majority of workers without the agreed adjustments.
The Minister for Labour, Jobs and Employment, Abdul-Rashid Hassan Pelpuo, had earlier appealed to CLOGSAG to call off the strike, acknowledging that the matter had taken the government by surprise. He said he had engaged the Finance Minister on the issue and urged union members to trust that the government would act. The plea was rejected.
The union has set one condition for ending the action. “The only thing that can let us rescind this decision is for government to implement the agreement,” Bampoe Addo stated.
The strike is expected to disrupt administrative operations across government ministries, departments, agencies and district assemblies nationwide until the dispute is resolved.
