Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung@ 40 in Ghana Chapter Six Championing Workers' Rights – FES in Ghana by Brother Adu-Amankwah K. Championing workers' rights has been the raison d'etre and driving force of the Ghana Trades Union Congress(GTUC) in the sixty four years of its existence. In this endeavour, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung(FES) has been one of its worthy cooperating partners over the last forty years. Ghana TUC was launched in August 1945 in the then Gold Coast mainly under the leadership of the railway workers and initially brought together fourteen affiliates with a total membership of 6030. Most of the affiliates were then house unions established in the public sector with the mine workers, private road transport workers and commercial workers being the more prominent private sector workers in those early years. Four years into its existence in the last quarter of 1949, Ghana TUC's support for workers of the Meteorological Services whose strike for higher pay and better conditions of service had resulted in the dismissal of some workers led the entire trade union movement into a clash with the colonial administration in January 1950. This evolved into a general strike with political undertones against colonial rule as a whole. The confrontation pushed the trade union movement firmly into the ranks of the anti-colonial movement. In the meantime, a major division occurred within the movement, with the Gold Coast Unemployed Workers Association which was formed after the general strike emerging as a new national trade union centre. By 1954, however, through mainly the efforts of the Convention Peoples Party(CPP), the main party that led the country to independence against colonial rule, unity was restored again to secure one national centre, with Ghana TUC playing the role of a strategic ally of the CPP in the anti-colonial struggle and providing many cadres for anti-colonial political activist work. 43