Lawyer: CBA cure to teacher strikes

A Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between teacher unions and the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) would be the cure to recurrent strikes over pay disputes, a court heard yesterday.

Lawyer Paul Muite for Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) told a five-judge bench of the Court of Appeal that TSC has been unwilling to sign a CBA which would introduce a structured manner on how teachers will be remunerated. The deal would be renegotiated every four years.

Appellate Judges Erastus Githinji, Philomena Mwilu, Festus Azangalala, Prof James Odek Otieno and Martha Koome also heard that as of last year, the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) never said the 50-60 per cent salary increase was unsustainable.

“At the time, the only issue SRC was concerned with was that teachers should first be subjected to a job evaluation before their salaries can be reviewed,” Mr Muite said.

He added that the pay hike the court awarded teachers on June 30 is reasonable given that it is to be implemented over a four-year period at the rate of 15 per cent for the high earning teachers and 12.5 for those in the lower cadres.

Mr Muite said teachers have faced historical injustices because while other civil servants got an automatic salary increase of four per cent per year, teachers continued to earn the same salary for over ten years since 1997.

Awarding teachers a four per cent annual increase which had accrued to other civil servants would translate into 64 per cent but the court awarded a partial 50-60 percent which had initially been offered by the TSC.

“The TSC had, in their letter, said they were proposing a 50-60 per cent after conducting an evaluation of what teachers in other countries are being paid,” lawyer Mr Muite.

He said even if the salaries are harmonized today, the court should not ignore the fact that the rights of teachers had been violated when their salaries remained stagnant for a long time. This, he said, can only be remedied by enforcing the award to cover the period July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2017.

Lawyer Kioko Kilukumi for Knut said since TSC has the mandate to employ and train teachers, it should also decide their salaries.

He called on the judges to note the fact that a P1 teacher earning Sh16,000 has been subjected to social injustice because he has the same needs as a state officer earning a million shillings per month.

“The SRC needs to look for the causes of the bloated wage bill and to address them. It is the huge salaries that need to be revised,” Mr Kilukumi said.

He said job evaluation being advocated for by SRC is a mandate that only the TSC can perform as the employer of teachers in public schools. Hearing continues today.