By Isaiah Bikhal
Members of the Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU) will now enjoy the full Sh13.6 billion package signed in the 2017-2021 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).
The new development resulted from the ruling made by the Employment and Labour Relations Court last week, which quashed a revised payment schedule by the Salaries Remuneration Commission (SRC).
The court ordered that the 2017-2021 CBA between UASU and the the Inter Universities Public Council Consultative Forum (IPUCCF) be registered and implemented diagonally as signed in the CBA schedules.
The order raises the total implementation cost from the previous Sh8.8 billion to Sh13.6 billion after reversing SRCs advisory proposing horizontal implementation.
Last year, the SRC had prepared an implementation schedule for the university employer representative – IPUCCF – excluding the annual increments for university staff and shifting the calculations from diagonal to horizontal.
That consequently altered the new salary scales and total arrears of university staff, forcing the unions to raise several anomalies in the implementation notes issued by the Commission.
During litigation by the parties over the CBA, the Court had instructed the IPUCCF to sign a consent agreement with UASU, KUSU and KUDHEIHA for expending the Sh8.8 billion for basic salary increments as new dates were set for contested issues of annual increments and retirement age.
UASU Secretary General Dr Constantine Wasonga had argued that SRC guidelines violated the employees’ right to promotion and annual increments.
He further contested that SRC also used arbitrary figures for the 2016/2017 financial year which employees have never benefitted from.
While delivering judgment in the IPUCCF vs UASU and others case on January 15, Justice Maureen Onyango faulted SRC’s computation of the CBA cost and explained that previous bargaining agreements had been calculated diagonally.
The National Assembly had approved Sh6.6 billion for the first phase of implementation for the 2017/2018, 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 phases while the remaining balance of Sh2.2 billion was to be appropriated in the 2020/2021 financial year.
Following the ruling, SRC was directed to work with IPUCCF, the Ministry of Education and the national Treasury to get additional funds for the CBA.
On the the retirement clause, the court directed that the retirement age should be in accordance with the prevailing government public service policy which restricts civil servants to 60 years and 65 years for persons with disabilities.
In 2009, the then Head of Public Service Francis Muthaura released an advisory that gave lecturers and researchers a retirement age bracket of between 60-74 years.
Last year, the Head of Public Service Joseph Kinyua released other guidelines, policies and legislations for academic staff and researchers that were not affected.
That was after the two parties agreed on retirement age of 75 years for all academic staff as a way of dealing with the discrepancies in the internally negotiated CBAs by various universities.
For example, Kenyatta University age retirement is 75 years, Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology 74 years, Maasai Mara University 70 years and Egerton University 70 years for professors while other academic staff categories all retire at 65 years.
In effect, Universities will continue using their local CBAs following 2009 advisory.
Addressing his members after the court ruling, Wasonga demanded immediate implementation of the 2017-2021 CBA as negotiated, payment of all arrears and placement of academic staff in the correct band.
Under the SRC formula, public university lecturers were to get the proposed increments in four phases from July 2021 to June 2025.
The agreement affects Graduate Research Assistants, Assistant Lecturer/Tutorial Fellow, Junior Research Fellow, Lecturer/Research Fellow, Senior Lecturer/Senior Research Fellow, Associate Professors and Professors.
