Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung@ 40 in Ghana By the time Ghana attained independence in 1957 Ghana TUC had grown to more than 80 affiliates. Meanwhile, from 1954, the Annual Conferences of Ghana TUC had begun considering issues of restructuring of the organisation and thus in 1958 got the CPP in government to strengthen its alliance with it by passing the Industrial Relations Act, 1958(Act 56) to provide legal backing for a restructured organisation with a number of new features. The new features included the regrouping of the house unions into national industrial unions thereby reducing the number from over 80 to 24(now 17); the institution of check-off system of dues collection; the institution of union right to collective bargaining once a trade union was duly registered; the legal recognition of Ghana TUC as the sole national trade union centre and representative of workers as well as institution of its control over its national union affiliates; the institution of compulsory arbitration in industrial dispute settlement and the virtual abolition of the right to strike. Later legislation also made union membership compulsory for public sector workers. Protests against the restrictive aspects of the legislation by some of the unions including the railway workers and the UAC Africa Employees Union with the support of the International Labour Organisation(ILO) and International Confederation of Free Trade Unions(ICFTU) then led to amendments in the legislation culminating in the first major review of the Industrial Relations Act in 1965(Act 299) that removed some of the more unsavoury aspects of the legislation for independent and democratic trade union organisation. In spite of the obvious restrictions on union existence and activity which the legislation by the CPP controlled Parliament ensured and which was challenged with some degree of success by 1965, the strategic alliance between Ghana TUC and the ruling party also contributed to laying the foundations of a number of important areas of work that have occupied Ghana TUC since the country's independence from colonial rule in 1957. Apart from the consolidation of collective 44