Varsity workers unions threaten to return to streets over State broken pledge
Officials of Universities Academic Staff Union and Kenya Universities Staff Union during a media briefing on October 15, 2024.
What you need to know:
- Workers union fault the government for failure to honour their end of the bargain.
- The lecturers and staffers had called off their initial job boycott after agreeing to the deal.
Public university workers' unions on Tuesday issued a fresh strike notice over government failure to honour the return-to-work formula signed on September 26.
The Universities Academic Staff Union (Uasu) and the Kenya Universities Staff Union (Kusu) said the government had failed to honour their end of the bargain, leaving them feeling cheated.
“Implement return-to-work formula or we go back to the streets. We're giving the government only one week [before we return to the streets,” said Uasu Secretary-General Constantine Wasonga.
He further asked their members "to start jogging [for] the streets are calling."
According to the dons’ union, when they signed the agreement in September following a nationwide strike in public universities, their employer agreed to pay the basic monthly salary and incorporate an increment of between seven per cent and 10 per cent in October salaries.
This increment, the unions explained, was computed at four per cent of the basic salary for the two years of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) cycle of 2021-2025, starting July 1, 2023.
However, Dr Wasonga said, the government had failed to operationalise and implement the CBA.
“Our members expect the new salaries next week,” Dr Wasonga said, cautioning the universities not to pay the salaries without honouring the pact.
“We're not going to shy away from calling another strike,” he warned the government. “Don't try us. If the CBA is not honoured by Tuesday, we will be on the streets.”
The failure by the government, the union said, is not only causing unnecessary tension and anxiety in the universities but also threatening to disrupt industrial peace.
When the lecturers agreed to call off their initial strike, the government agreed to fast tracks total operationalisation of the return-to-work formula.
In the arrangement, as per the 2021-2025 CBA, the minimum pay for graduate assistants should be between Sh63,647 and Sh97,988.
For assistant lecturers, it ranges between Sh107,872 and Sh166,072. Professors are to earn Sh224,631 for minimum wage and Sh345,816 as maximum pay.
The public university lecturers and staffers had called off their initial job boycott after agreeing to the deal brokered by the Ministry of Labour.
At the time, the government and the dons agreed to set up mechanisms to address university staff grievances before they escalate into industrial action.
Subsequently, Labour Cabinet Secretary Alfred Mutua announced the formation of an inter-ministerial committee to address unresolved issues.
But the crisis that the talks hoped to avert is yet again looming, as the lecturers issue a seven-day strike notice.
The other time when Uasu and Kusu issued a strike notice on September 11, 2024, Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba two days later, wrote to invite the unions for a meeting on Monday September 16, 2024. However, the meeting ended in a stalemate.
“Whatever the CS and his team was requesting us to do, we couldn’t give right away. After consultation with our members and the relevant organs of our unions, they said, no more waiting for negotiations. It’s not feasible to continue earning the same in the current economic environment where everything has gone up and our purchasing power eroded,” Dr Charles Mukhwaya, the secretary-general of Kusu told Nation then.
Dr Wasonga told Nation that lecturers were prepared for a long-drawn-out strike to get better pay for them.
“We don’t eat promises or promissory notes. If it takes years, we don’t care, as long as our members' concerns aren’t taken care of. If they come with promises, we’ll reject them. We want something tangible,” Dr Wasonga said then.
At the heart of the dispute is the proposed 2021 – 2025 CBA. The lecturers have waited for three years to negotiate the CBA as there has been no progress since they tabled their demand proposal on September 4 2020.
