After a day-long bargaining session on Monday, KUPPET (Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers), the teachers’ union representing over 109,000 teachers, reached a deal with officials from the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to end a weeklong strike that had affected millions of students in public schools in the country.
The deal only augmented the clout the teachers’ union and teachers, in general, have with TSC, their employer, and the current ruling Kenya Kwanza administration. But union leaders said that what was perhaps more important to them was that the strike had provided an alternate narrative to nearly all of the issues they had raised.
“From the union side, we suspend the strike and ask all our teachers to go back to class pending the speedy resolution of these matters as already agreed on between us and the commission,” said Akelo Misori, the Secretary General of KUPPET.
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They were pushing for, among other issues, a review of career progression guidelines and promotion of 130,000 teachers, employment of 46,000 Junior Secondary School (JSS) teachers on permanent and pensionable terms and, from now on, timely remittance of statutory deductions and loans.
In the deal, the union also won a significant concession from the TSC on the CBA, Collective Bargaining Agreement, signed in 2021, which the commission’s chief executive has avowed its implementation without delay.
“We are happy to report to the nation that we have reached an amicable settlement which will enable our teachers to resume duty immediately,” TSC CEO Nancy Macharia said. “The government has implemented all the provisions of the 2021-25 CBA with the teacher unions, specifically, the second phase of the CBA, which was due on July 1, 2024.”
Both sides characterized the agreement as a way to offer support to students, especially the candidates, who have missed classes after thousands of teachers across the nation marched in streets and picketed outside schools since they opened for the third term on Monday, August 16, 2024.
Now, all teachers are expected to go back to work from tomorrow as the deal applies to all teacher unions, including the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) and the Kenya Union of Special Needs Education Teachers.
