Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Secretary General Wilson Sossion has demanded a fresh pay rise in the implementation of the 2017-2021 collective bargaining agreement (CBA).
A report by Daily Nation on Sunday, July 19, indicated that the fiery union boss was seeking to have salaries of some 103,634 school heads increased including that of their deputies as well as other teachers.
The group had been removed from the beneficiaries during the third implementation of the CBA to the tune of Ksh54 billion.
This was after the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), which is tasked with paying teachers, won a court case stopping the increament.
“It is against international labour practices for an employer to withhold teachers’ salaries when the finances have been budgeted for," argued Sossion.
He further noted that it was unfair for the commission to punish teachers for a mistake they did not make.
Several headteachers noted that they had missed their salary increase averaging between Ksh16,000 and Ksh23,000.
Some even suspected that they missed out on the pay rise due to their membership at KNUT with others already seeking membership at Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (kuppet) where members received their scheduled pay rise.
“There should be a uniform way of handling teachers. Leaving some us out is very unfair,” lamented a headteacher.
TSC CEO Nancy Macharia, on the other hand, disclosed that the commission did not possess accurate data of all individuals who were to benefit from the current payrise.
TSC moved to court in 2019 to block the 103,624 teachers from the increase arguing that the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) could not go on using career progression guidelines.
That was after KNUT demanded that school principals were to be the biggest winners of the pay rise, taking home Ksh16,503 more.
