Teachers of Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) will have a big smile after the members of Parliament jumped in to make sure that they recieve their new salaries in accordance to their last Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA)
The National Assembly Education Committee on Tuesday held a meeting with both KNUT and Teachers Service Commission (TSC) in what was mutually agreed that revealed that the giant teachers union, KNUT has been losing thousands of members in regard to the CBA situation.
About three third of KNUT membership was lost since mid 2019. From over 200,000 teachers belonging to the union, the number dropped to less than 50,000 members.
This was after TSC left about 35,000 KNUT's teachers out of their salary increment and promotion claiming that it was the scheme of services preferred by their union.
Beatrice Wababu, the communication director at Teachers Service Commission said that the KNUT teachers did not deserve promotion from Job group B5. Only KUPPET teachers and those who did not belong to any unions were promoted in a promotion that started last year leaving about 100,000 teachers out of CBA.
Education committee led by Chairperson and Busia County woman representative Florence Mutua called the end of hostility between KNUT and TSC and advised them to withdraw court cases adding that the relation should be set at pre-2016 level.
SIX PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS VS TEACHERS SERVICE COMMISSION.
Six primary school teachers have won a case against Teachers Service Commission (TSC) in which their promotion was canceled by their employer. The six teachers will proceed to earn salaries equivalent to tutors in college or lecturers.
The six teachers who had been released from primary school and promoted by TSC as lecturers at the Migori Teachers Training Colleges upon their degrees graduation, were two years later transferred back to primary school teachers. They were aggressive and they then filed a court cases in 2019 January.
It was claimed that the college orchestrated a plan to humiliate them in 2018 and they recieved transfer letters to primary schools in less than two years of their promotion. According to the TSC’s transfer policy an employees is required to serve at their new stations for at least five years before they can be transferred.
After hearing their case, the Employment and Labour Relations court through judge Onesmus Makau evidently found that the teachers' rights were violated by cancelation of their rightful promotion by TSC.
The court found out that despite no decrement in their salaries, reducing their social standing from lecturers to primary teachers was a clear demotion. The termed their situation as discrimination, infringement of their rights to human dignity, fair administrative action and fair labour practice.
In their case, Teachers Service Commission had defended themselves claiming that promotion procedures were ignored by the officer who was in charge of promoting the 6 teachers. TSC argued that the teachers were irregularly transferred from the primary institutions they were teaching on different dates in two thousand and seventeen and eighteen, to lecture Migori TTC without following the outlined procedures.
TSC claimed that the officer who gave the promotion was fired after the incident for violating the deployment policies and guidelines. According to the commission, they claimed, deployment of post basic qualifications as outlined in the 2006 policy only requires retention of degrees graduates in primary schools.
Under TSC policy, acquiring higher education only guarantees higher payments and not deployment to a higher levels or to post-primary institutions. Teachers Service Commission was a ordered to atleast compensate all the teachers 300,000 shillings each for the unfair administrative action that was taken against them.
The six teachers are Ms Nancy Anyango, Mr Kenneth Ojwang’, Mr Meshack Onindo, Carolyne Adhiambo, Mr Richard Asiago and Mr Nelson Muogo. The teachers successfully accused TSC of failing to disclose in the letters the reasons as to why it demoted them and did not give them an opportunity to be heard.
JAFFREY ACADEMY VS 7 PRIVATE TEACHERS
Teachers in Mombasa County got defeated in a court case against their bosses in a private school. The 7 private teachers had sued Jaffery Academy in Mombasa Labour Court, for cutting their salaries as they sought a salary review and damages awards from the private school.
The labour court led by Judge James Rika ruled out that the teachers should appreciate that they are still employed while they have nothing to render to the learning institution at the moment. The judge noted the arbitrary termination has been applied to many contracts during this Covid-19 period.
According to judge James Rika the school took a reasonable action considering that it has 136 employed workers still in contact with the institution with nothing to render at the moment. He said many institutions globally fired their workers due to closure of schools amid covic19 pandemic.
Justice Rika agreed that it is impossible for the schools to predict when coronavirus pandemic will end, a fact that all the 7 private teachers agreed in the affidavits presented before the court. The teachers claimed it was unfair for the school to review their payments without them having proper consultations.
Further, they sued the school for not including them in their virtual lessons rendering them as nonessential staff, which led to a 65 per cent pay cut. Tuition fees was also reduced by 45 per cent which according to the Head Teacher, it was due to the difficulties faced during this pandemic.
