Editor's Review

Teachers are likely to miss out on salary increments and promotions following delayed negotiations between unions and TSC on a new CBA.

Teachers in the country will most likely miss out on their annual salary increments and promotions following delayed negotiations between them and the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) on the 2021-2025 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).

This is after it emerged that the teachers' employer was yet to present a counter offer to the proposal made by teachers in November 2020, amid revelations by the National Treasury that the government has no money.

Teachers' unions on May 28, 2021, called for a meeting demanded that the discuss the CBA, further urging that the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) give a directive on the matter.

Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Secretary-General Wilson Sossion stated that it is unfortunate that the clock is running out on the current CBA agreement yet no efforts have been made to renegotiate the terms.

"There is no new CBA for teachers. What that means is that teachers will miss their salary increments in July and teachers will not get promotions," Sossion stated.

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The current Ksh54 billion CBA for the 2017-2021 period will come to an end on June 30. TSC as part if the final phase of the CBA promoted 16,152 teachers with another 1000 diploma teachers set for promotions by the end of June.

A new CBA is therefore required to guide TSC on further teacher salary increments and promotions.

The CBA is the legal binding agreement between the unions and employers and is guided by a framework provided by the SRC. In this framework, employers and the unions are supposed to negotiate a new agreement a year before the end of the existing CBA, after which the unions will present their proposals within 60 days.

The employer is then supposed to submit the union's proposals to the SRC within 30 days of receiving them.

SRC then issues parameters of the CBA agreement within 30 days, after which the employer will be required to provide a counter offer for the parameters within 60 days.

Once negotiations are completed within the agreed parameters, the employer then seeks permission to have the CBA registered.