Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers Secretary General Akello Misori (centre) and other Kuppet officials address the media in Nairobi on September 20, 2024.
The Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) is anxiously waiting to see whether it will receive the monthly union contributions from its membership after missing out on the crucial funds for the last three months.
The union has dragged the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to court over its failure to deduct and remit union dues from teachers since the union called a nationwide strike in August.
This strategy is similar to one employed by the commission in 2019 against the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) after a dispute between the two.
Kuppet has obtained a court order directing TSC to remit union dues and agency fees to the union before November 19, 2024.
The commission continues to deduct and remit dues to Knut, which pulled out of the strike plan just hours before it began. At the time, Knut’s Secretary-General Collins Oyuu predicted the punishment that awaited Kuppet.
The notice
“We’ve been there before and we can see far. We withdrew the notice, and our members are safe. I wasn’t in a popularity contest and therefore did what was right. Kuppet has accused us of being government agents. What they did for a long time is what we’re now doing. They’ll suffer,” Mr Oyuu told Nation.
Due to the lack of cash, Kuppet now faces vehicle repossession notices from banks, suspension notices from its medical insurance provider, and is also being pursued by other creditors. It, for example, owes Jubilee Health Insurance Sh13.2 million in unpaid premiums for its staff, and the provider has written to Kuppet threatening to suspend the cover.
On October 23, 2024, Stanbic Bank also wrote to Kuppet regarding unremitted loan instalments by union staff, threatening to commence recovery action, including forwarding their details to credit reference bureaus for blacklisting.
The denial of cash appears to have mellowed the union, which mobilised teachers across the country to down tools during the first week of the third term.
Among other grievances, the union had demanded increased allowances for teachers involved in the administration and marking of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations.
It threatened to boycott the exercise but has remained silent throughout. The examinations will end on November 22, 2024, with marking to commence thereafter.
When TSC denied Knut the monthly dues from 2019 to 2021, the union saw its membership shrink from over 180,000 to 12,000, weakening its branch operations. Currently, operations in Kuppet branches have been greatly affected as staff go without salaries.
In the court filings, Kuppet relied heavily on the consent it jointly deposited (with TSC) before the Employment and Labour Relations Court after agreeing on a return-to-work formula.
Consent guaranteed
The union argues that since the consent guaranteed the union and its membership would not be victimised for participating in the strike and was adopted as a court order, TSC is in contempt of court.
“Kuppet, like any trade union, operates within a budget funded by voluntary member contributions, and the only role of the employer is to deduct,” said Jacqueline Lorraine Akello, the advocate for the union.
On November 2, 2024, the national executive board of the union met with President William Ruto at State House, Nairobi, and the matter is understood to have been on the agenda, although it was left out of the briefing later.
A statement by Secretary-General Akello Misori only discussed other matters like the Affordable Housing programme and the employment of more teachers, steering clear of seeking the President’s intervention.
