Presidency and four CSs now sucked into Knut, TSC feud

Knut boss Wilson Sossion with TSC chief Nancy Macharia.

The Office of the President and four Cabinet Secretaries have been roped into the conflict between the teachers’ employer and the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut).

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) and Cotu have also been sucked into the long-running trade dispute between Knut and the Teachers Service Commission (TSC).

In a letter dated November 13 to TSC Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia, Knut Secretary General Wilson Sossion makes reference to a series of letters between the union and the teachers’ employer.

He also lists correspondences between the union and the Salaries and Remuneration Commission, and tags in several government offices for action.

Sossion attaches all the copies of the correspondence, which have been sent to Head of Public Service Joseph Kinyua, Cabinet Secretaries George Magoha (Education), Fred Matiang’i (Interior), Simon Chelugui (Labour) and Ukur Yatani (National Treasury).

After listing various points of disagreements with TSC, Sossion issues ultimatums for unspecified action. “You have strictly three weeks to remedy all these, failure of which the union shall take stern action against you as provided in Article 41 of the constitution without any further referenced to you,” says Sossion.

“We have endured your overboard and illegal activities for far too long and not any more.”

The thrust of the complaint is the implementation of Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between Knut and TSC. 

“We wish to state that you elected to mismanage the CBA that is currently under implementation and commenced the next CBA in an unprocedural manner,” says Sossion.

The TSC has, however, trashed this narrative, saying teachers have quit Knut on their own.

“There has been a narrative that TSC removed members from Knut to benefit a rival union and that is not true. If teachers left any union, they did so on their own based on a court ruling that worked against them,” said TSC Head of Corporate Affairs Beatrice Wababu.

Sossion accuses TCS of disobeying a court order not to tamper with its membership.

But in her earlier responses, Dr Macharia said the commission could not disobey the courts. “When the CBA was signed, it introduced a new grading system known as Career Progression Guidelines, which replaced the Scheme of Service. But Knut challenged the implementation of the CPG in court,” she said.