Leveraging pension power: How Ghanaian trade unions can turn capital into Worker rights

Globally, organised labour is navigating an unprecedented structural crisis. Membership densities continue to dwindle, undermined by expanding informal economies, shifts in employment relationships like casualisation, and subtle to aggressive corporate anti-union practices. In response, the international labour movement under the guidance of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has continuously urged affiliated unions to innovate, revise, and modernise their organising and recruitment strategies. Still, while unions in Ghana search for new ways to recruit workers, they often miss one of their most cogent levers: the financial power of public sector workers’ pension funds. The Financial Goliath Built on Workers’ Sweat Under Ghana’s National Pensions Act, 2008 (Act 766), mandatory social security contributions equal 18.5% of an employee’s basic salary. While 13.5% goes to the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) for Tier-1, 5% is directed into mandatory Tier-2 occupational pension schemes. Over the past decade, these Tier-2 public sector schemes such as the Health Services Occupational Pension Scheme (HSOPS), the Ghana Education Service Occupational Pension Scheme (GESOPS), and the Public Sector Workers Employees' Pension Scheme (PSWEPS) have grown into financial powerhouses.