Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Secretary General Wilson Sossion has renewed his fight with Teachers Service Commission (TSC) over salaries of 150,000 teachers.
In a letter dated Friday, November 13, a tough-talking Sossion gave the commission three weeks to begin their Collective Bargain Agreement (CBA).
In the letter, he also asked TSC CEO Nancy Macharia to convene an urgent meeting to address the impasse between the two organisations.
He further noted that the 2017-2021 bargain should be completed before they embarked on the 2021-2023 negotiations.
"TSC should not put us in the collision course with the government, and disrupt the industrial peace in the teaching service by engaging in mischievous and illegal ways of conceiving, negotiating and implementing the CBA," read the letter in part according to Daily Nation.
The current bargain is set to expire on June 30, 2021 with the new one expected to take effect on July 1, 2021.
The bargain was expected to deliver a salary increment for some 150,000 teachers who were at the time attached to KNUT, some of which have since left the union en masse.
Sossion attributed to the mass walkouts to TSC decision not to honour the CBA negotiations.
In the letter, the SG also demanded that the CBA negotiations be reduced to a two-year cycle instead of the current four-year version which he explained was not admissible by the current labour laws.
On Thursday, November 12, the union began its process of shutting down 110 offices countrywide due to financial constraints.
Sossion attributed the outcome to TSC failure to pay the union its dues and urged the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection Cabinet Secretary Simon Chelugui to intervene on the matter.
In October 2020, the union received a paltry Ksh25 million payout from the government to cater for its 34,000 membership.
In July 2019, the membership stood at over 187,000 and earned the union Ksh144 million in monthly union payout from TSC.
