This study investigates the response by trade unions in Ghana to economic liberalisation: focusing on the regulatory changes in the port sector in Ghana since 2000, how this affected the labour market and labour, and the responses of a Ghanaian trade union to these changes. It argues that argues against influential overgeneralisations about the incapacity of trade unions to defend the interests of workers under neoliberalism and economic liberalisation, and instead calls for a more grounded and context-specific study of their relevance. The paper provides a mixed picture, where some tangible improvements were won by trade unions, alongside defeats and difficult compromises. The paper shows that analysis of the possibilities of trade union must be grounded in the study of labour markets, and of the sources of power and vulnerability that workers derive from their economic location.