Nurses' CBA to be registered in court this month
What you need to know:
- Governors say negotiation process about to be finalised ahead of registration in court.
- Early last month, nurses secured a pay deal addressing their uniform and nursing service allowances, the key contentious issue that had prolonged the impasse.
- The health workers agreed to a payment structure that would see their uniform allowance increase by 33 per cent per year up to financial year 2020/2021.
Nurses are set to have their collective bargaining agreement (CBA) registered in court and if honoured, it will see them enjoy higher salaries and a better working environment.
Council of Governors (CoG) chairman, Josphat Nanok, said on Thursday that they have endorsed the draft agreement that would be binding and that the negotiating team is ready to proceed to finalise process and have the CBA registered in the Employment and Labour Relations Court.
Mr Nanok also said the CoG has resolved to jointly with the National Government examine the gaps in the regulatory framework that governs industrial disputes in order to avert future strikes.
“The negotiations for the nurses CBA are coming to a finality,” said Mr Nanok yesterday.
“We have endorsed the draft document and now the negotiating team will proceed to finalize process and have the CBA registered in the Labour court.”
He was speaking yesterday at the CoG headquarters at Delta House, Westlands, during a governors’ extra ordinary meeting attended by the World Bank and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation representatives.
Strike over
Early last month, nurses secured a pay deal addressing their uniform and nursing service allowances, the key contentious issue that had prolonged the impasse, ending a five month old strike that caused Kenyans endless pains and deaths.
The health workers agreed to a payment structure that would see their uniform allowance increase by 33 per cent per year up to financial year 2020/2021.
This means that when the allowance take effect in the financial year 2018/2019 each nurse would get a uniform allowance of Sh15,00 up from Sh10,000 increasing by Sh5,000 to Sh25,000 payable in a year in financial year 2020/2021.
The Nursing Service Allowance will go up by up to 13.2 per cent from Sh23,000 in the financial year 2018/2019 to Sh30,000 in 2020/2021.
The CBA the nurses have been pushing for was expected to be signed and registered in court in 30 days after the Return to Work agreement was signed on November 2.
“We hope this would be free from any sort of hostile environment from parties involved,” said the Kenya National Union of Nurses secretary-general, Seth Panyako.
