- The writer has argued that a university CBA’s real test lies not in reaching an agreement, but in whether it is honoured after the signing ceremony ends.
- Muhalya has warned that treating negotiated commitments as mere expressions of intent has repeatedly disrupted academic calendars, examinations and graduations.
- Muhalya has called on Government and lecturers’ unions to shift focus from negotiation to implementation so students stop bearing the cost of unresolved disputes.
The credibility of Kenya’s university education system rests not only on the Government’s ability to negotiate with lecturers, but on its willingness and capacity to honour whatever is agreed once the talks are over. At the heart of that credibility question is the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), the mechanism through which university lecturers and their employer negotiate remuneration, working conditions, career progression and other terms of employment. A CBA should not be treated as merely a document unveiled after weeks or months of negotiation; it should represent a binding commitment that continues to command attention long after the signing ceremony, the handshakes and the photographs have faded from public view.
The real test facing Kenya’s university sector, then, is not whether Government and lecturers can reach agreements at all. It is whether the agreements they reach in good faith are subsequently treated with the seriousness they deserve.
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A familiar cycle of dispute and resolution
There is a familiar pattern whenever industrial relations in the university sector deteriorate. Lecturers raise grievances, unions and Government representatives enter negotiations, and industrial action looms or begins. Eventually the two sides return to the table, find common ground and sign a settlement. Hands are shaken, statements are issued, cameras capture the moment, and lecturers return to work as universities restore normal academic operations. For students and their families, that return to classrooms brings genuine relief.
But the signing of a CBA should mark the beginning of implementation, not the beginning of a fresh dispute over whether the commitments made will actually be honoured. It is at this point that confidence in collective bargaining is either strengthened or seriously undermined.
Commitments must outlast the cameras
A negotiated agreement cannot acquire meaning only when industrial pressure is at its highest. If the Government enters negotiations, makes commitments and signs an agreement with lecturers’ representatives, those commitments should come with a clear implementation framework. Where financial constraints exist, they ought to be addressed transparently during negotiations; where implementation requires additional resources, timelines should be clearly understood by all parties. The danger arises when an agreement that helped end an industrial dispute is later treated as though it were simply an expression of good intentions rather than a binding settlement, a pattern that risks creating uncertainty for lecturers and unions while weakening the incentive for future parties to rely on negotiated outcomes. Collective bargaining, ultimately, works only when negotiated outcomes can be trusted.
The real cost of broken confidence
The consequences of disputes between university lecturers and the Government extend well beyond the negotiating table. Every prolonged strike disrupts students’ academic programmes: lectures are interrupted, examinations may be delayed, academic calendars are thrown into uncertainty, and graduations and research programmes can face knock-on effects. Parents and guardians, meanwhile, continue meeting financial obligations while waiting for their children’s academic programmes to resume, and universities themselves lose valuable time that should be devoted to teaching, research, innovation and community engagement. The country therefore has a much bigger stake in industrial stability within universities than the immediate interests of the two negotiating parties. A stable university system requires lecturers who have confidence in their employment arrangements and institutions that can plan academic activities with reasonable certainty.
A return-to-work agreement matters because it provides a pathway out of industrial action, but the ultimate objective should be more than simply getting lecturers back into classrooms; it should be to resolve the underlying issues sufficiently to prevent the same dispute from returning. If lecturers suspend industrial action on the understanding that specific commitments will be addressed under a negotiated framework, implementation becomes central to preserving industrial peace. Without it, the sector risks falling into a repetitive cycle of dispute, strike, negotiation, agreement and return to work, followed eventually by another dispute over implementation, a cycle that is costly, disruptive and unsustainable.
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Shared responsibility between government and unions
The Government, as employer and central financier of public universities, carries an important responsibility to ensure that commitments made during negotiations are realistic. Negotiators should enter discussions with sufficient information about available resources, projected costs and implementation requirements, since it is better to negotiate a realistic agreement that can be implemented than to make ambitious commitments that later prove difficult to fulfil. The same principle applies to lecturers’ representatives: collective bargaining requires honesty from both sides, with agreements based on realistic expectations and clearly understood obligations. Once an agreement has been reached, the focus should shift decisively from negotiation to implementation.
For university lecturers, employment conditions are not abstract policy questions; they affect household planning, professional development and long-term career decisions. A lecturer who enters a negotiated employment arrangement should reasonably expect clarity about what has been agreed, when it will be implemented and what mechanisms exist for addressing disagreements. Predictability matters especially in the academic profession, where career progression, research, teaching responsibilities and professional development are closely interconnected, and frequent uncertainty over negotiated terms can affect morale and, ultimately, the quality of the academic environment.
Students bear the cost of unresolved disputes
The people most affected by recurring university labour disputes are often the students. They are not parties to CBAs, yet they bear many of the consequences when negotiations fail. A student whose semester is interrupted may face delayed examinations, postponed graduation or additional financial pressure, a burden that is especially difficult for students from low-income households. This makes industrial stability in universities a national education priority, and Government and lecturers’ unions must recognise that the consequences of unresolved disagreements are ultimately transferred to learners and their families.
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Signing ceremonies generate headlines because they represent moments of apparent breakthrough, but cameras eventually move on. Officials return to their offices, union leaders return to their members, lecturers return to lecture halls, and students return to their studies. The photographs remain, but the real work begins after the publicity ends, when the commitments contained in the agreement must be translated into policy, budgets, administrative action and tangible improvements. The strength of a CBA should not be measured by how impressive its signing ceremony was, but by how faithfully and transparently it is implemented.
The university sector needs a culture of collective bargaining in which negotiations are conducted seriously, agreements are carefully crafted, and implementation is treated as an obligation rather than an afterthought. The Government must be able to negotiate with credibility, lecturers’ unions must be able to negotiate with confidence, universities must be able to plan, and, most importantly, students must be able to learn without repeatedly becoming casualties of industrial disputes. A CBA should not be reduced to a document used to end an immediate crisis; it should be regarded as a framework for industrial stability throughout its agreed period. The ultimate measure of a successful negotiation is not the handshake at the signing table, but whether the parties continue to honour what they agreed once public attention has shifted elsewhere. A negotiated university CBA should bind in principle and in practice, not merely when the cameras are rolling, but even after they have been switched off.
By Hillary Muhalya
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