Learning in all the 35 public universities, and three constituent colleges came to a screeching halt following the lecturers’ strike that teed off on September 18.
This came hot on the heels of a breakdown of negotiations between the Inter-Public Universities Council Consultative Forum, on one hand, and the Universities Academic Staff Union and Kenya University Staff Union on the other.
The issue is non-implementation of the 2021-25 Collective Bargaining Agreement. Before we delve into the issues in contention, let us clear the obstructions.
What is this animal called CBA? Teachers, doctors, medical workers, civil servants and now, the professoriate are talking about it with such emotion.
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between the representatives of an employer and of workers.
The intention of these negotiations is to arrive at a collective agreement that will govern the employment relationship.
Collective bargaining is premised on a well-defined employment relationship and the freedom of workers and employers to associate with an organisation that represents their interests.
It is a means to address work-related issues in a way that accommodates the interests of all parties concerned.
The origins of collective bargaining can be traced to the industrial revolution in the 18th and early 19th centuries, a period of profound technological, economic and social change.
Workers sought to protect themselves from the effects of new production methods and increased competitive pressures by forming organisations capable of representing their interests to employers and the government.
The International Labour Organisation has long noted the increasing importance of the collective agreement as an element in the social and economic structure of the modern industrial community.
Collective bargaining is also widely recognised by scholars as a key instrument for regulating working conditions and employment relations in a manner that ensures fairer distribution of productivity gains, improving working conditions and enhancing the dignity of workers.
In the case of the higher education ecosystem, collective bargaining is spearheaded by the IPUCCF, representing the employer (read government), and University Academic Union representing teaching staff, and Kenya Universities Staff Union representing non-teaching staff.
What are the dons aggrieved about? The overarching grievance of the dons, as captured in the bundle of documents submitted to the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Science and Technology, is the failure by the government to negotiate, sign, register and implement the 2021-2025 CBA.
As well as a large chunk of the provisions agreed on in the 2017-21 CBA. You see, the terms and conditions of service for public sector employees in Kenya are reviewed on a four-year cycle under a collective bargaining agreement framework.
Currently, the terms and conditions of service for university staff are contained in the 2017-21 CBAs, which technically expired on June 30, 2021.
As such, the review of the terms and conditions of service for university staff under the 2012-25 CBA framework effective from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2025, is long overdue.
In jurisdictions, where the rule of law is respected, the state officer or officers responsible for this ignominy should have been dismissed for dereliction of duty and truancy.
The 2021-25 CBAs were to give university workers salary increment and other benefits, such as harmonisation of all allowances (housing, leave, commuter, book, professorial), four per cent automatic annual increments, non-contributory comprehensive medical scheme for all cadres, car loan and mortgage scheme and recruitment of additional staff with effect from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2025.
The University workers unions gave the IPUCCF their proposals on September 4, 2020, to allow for negotiations to be done by November 2020 to enable budgeting of the required amount for the 2021-22 financial year.
This would enable payment of new salaries effective July 1, 2021. IPUCCF sat on the proposals and never convened any negotiations until 2023. Even then, they had to be dragged to the negotiation table by the Employment and Labour Relations Court.
This begs the question: can faculty gain economically through unionisation? The current impasse has brought to the fore the internal contradictions of the collective bargaining process in higher education. Collective bargaining so far is with university councils.
It is the councils that are the employers under the Labour Acts. Yet councils do not ultimately hold the purse strings, since they receive the monies over which they have trusteeship from the national government.
In these circumstances, it is very difficult for a faculty union to exert much economic pressure across the bargaining table because it is really the government that has to pay the cost of any concessions made, and not the employer.
Going forward, this collective bargaining ecosystem, in which unions engage with government proxies, should be recalibrated with the intention of curing inefficiencies that plague the process
Collective bargaining has settled like a mist upon the campus, clouding and obscuring traditional roles and relationships.
The challenge of university councils and vice chancellors is to look through the mist, to perceive the opportunities offered by collective bargaining, to understand them-and to seize upon them.
Burying their heads in the sand, as they have demonstrated in this instance, is the height of irresponsibility.
In this industrial action, the professoriate is agitating for more than salary increment.
This is about governance of higher education, respect of the rule of law and institutions but more importantly, the dignity of the worker.
The writer teaches Globalisation and International Development at Pwani University and is a programmes associate at DTM, a media CSO