Teachers employer, Knut to hold fresh pay hike negotiations after last week’s deadlock
The teachers’ employer has invited the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) to a second round of negotiations to discuss a new Collective Bargaining Agreement on Tuesday.
It comes after KNUT and the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) rejected an offer by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) last week.
“The Commission has the pleasure to invite the Kenya Union of Teachers (KNUT) to a meeting to be held from Tuesday, 13th July, 2021 at Safari Park hotel.
The meeting will commence at 2.00 pm,” reads the invite from the CEO Nancy Macharia addressed to the union’s new Secretary General Collins Oyuu.
The letter says the meeting will consider the “declaration of conflict of interest and negotiating and signing the 2021-2025 CBA.”
Teachers had rejected the offer by their employer during the meeting held last week.
Speaking after the day-long deliberations, the union officials who included Oyuu, Kuppet’s Akelo Misori (Secretary General) and Omboko Milemba (chairman) rejected TSC’s offer on grounds that it revolved around maternity and paternity issues, as opposed to a “financial offer”.
“How many of us will go for maternity and paternity leave? And how will this put food on the table?” Oyuu posed.
“I think I am still very fresh and I need my teachers to continue celebrating,” Oyuu said.
“We must improve industrial relations and even as we rejected the offer, nobody banged the table. We just laughed ,” said Oyuu, signaling a departure from his predecessor, Wilson Sossion’s confrontational style.
TSC had based its decision not to include any salary increments in the new CBA to an advisory by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission.
“SRC gave an advisory that there would be no review of the basic salary structures, allowances and benefits paid public sector in the financial year 2021 /2022 — 2022/2023,” Macharia explained.
“Kuppet is reluctant to entertain a CBA with no monetary benefits,” Misori said.
He said the union was pushing for a pay rise that would cushion teachers against inflation and the burdens of increased workload under the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC).
“Given the wide disparities in remuneration across the various cadres in the expiring 2016-2021 CBA, coupled with the sharp inflation in the country, this is the time to review teachers’ salaries,” the statement reads.
Kuppet termed the proposals by TSC as “negligible improvement” in the working conditions of teachers.
This includes the expansion of maternity leave from 90 days to 120.
The commission also proposed fast-tracking of promotions in arid and semi-arid areas.
It also will include the newly passed pre-adoptive leave for parents exploring adoption to bond with their children.
“After the current CBA expires tomorrow, the Kuppet National Governing Council will meet within seven days, to deliberate on incipient vacuum and give directions to our members,” the union said in a statement. The current CBA expired on June 30.
