KNUT Demands Pay Rise for School Admins Left Out Of CBA

The Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) has requested the teachers employer to include over 103,000 school heads, their deputies and senior teachers in this month’s pay rise as it implements phase four of the 2017-2021 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).

The 103,000 teachers were left out last year by the Teacher’s Service Commission (TSC) during the implementation of phase three of the Ksh 54 billion CBA. It was after the Knut won a court case stopping the career progression guidelines that TSC was using to increase teachers’ salaries that the teachers were removed from the list of beneficiaries.

The school admins who including Chief principals, senior principals, principals, deputies, head teachers and senior teachers are KNUT members.

TSC July 2020 payroll

The headteachers want to be included in the July payroll that the TSC is expected to conclude and close. The KNUT secretary general, Mr. Wilson Session asked that all pending salary increments from July last year to June 2020 be paid by the KNUT.

He also asked that the teachers employer includes school administrators in this month’s salary increment.

“It’s against international labour practices for an employer to withhold teachers’ salaries when the finances have been budgeted for”, said Mr. Sossion.

The KNUT boss said that parliament appropriated for the teacher’s funds and asked TSC to explain where it took the funds.

He said the commission can’t choose to punish teachers for mistakes they didn’t do. Mr Session also demanded that the teachers’ CBA should be respected, because it’s a legal document.

Several principals revealed that they have missed between Ksh 16,000 to Ksh 23,000 monthly increase that was meant for the principals.

Frustrated, most of the teachers decided to move to Kenya Union of Post Primary Teachers (Kuppet) whose members received a full CBA benefit.

However, some teachers have reported failure to join Kuppet through the TSC portal which shows their membership has not been validated.

Waiting for dues

One principal from Kisii county said he tried several times in a bid to benefit a little from the salary increase but was not helped.

27 others in the region have joined the heads saying they have been pushing to be paid their pending dues and be included in this month’s increment in vain.

Another principal from the Machakos county said he had not received his dues yet.

“There should be a uniform way of handling teachers. Leaving some of us out is very unfair.” Said ths head teacher.

The commission issued a letter on June 3 to county and sub county directors of education asking for data on school administrators who would benefit from the CBA.

TSC has No accurate Teachers data

TSC Chief Executive officer, Nancy Macharia said the commission doesn’t have an accurate data of teachers to benefit in phase four of the CBA.

Akelo Misori, the Kuppet secretary general said that it is sad that the commission Is waking up to the reality of four years into the CBA when it’s only one phase left for it to be affected.

According to Kuppet, the CBA efforts will yield more than 6,700 post-primary teacher salary increments. Mr Misori asked the TSC to complete their full  conversion and benefits for the current phase and the upcoming last phase of the CBA’s implementation.

In Phase three, a further 3,800 technical and vocational education teachers were left out. This followed their transfer under the public service Commission in 2018.

“The teachers benefited from the first and second phase of the CBA before their transfers and upon their transfer. Kuppet was assumed their perks under the CBA would not be affected” said Mr. Misori.

The unions have been advocating for the payment of teachers’ arrears since phase three of the CBA was implemented in 2019.