The Central Organisation of Trade Unions has condemned the Teachers Service Commission's decision to cut teachers' pay.
Secretary-general Francis Atwoli said this amounted to impunity, was illegal and unconstitutional.
He was responding to TSC's plan to recover billions of shillings paid to more than 190,000 Knut members two years ago when a Sh54 billion salary increment was implemented.
Already, Knut has suffered a major set back after TSC refused to deduct and remit Sh140 million monthly union dues. This threatens to cripple the teachers' union.
Atwoli, who spoke in Nairobi on Saturday, noted the International Labour Organisation Convention 95 on Protection of Wages of 1949, the Employment Act Part IV on Protection of Wages and the 2010 Constitution Article 41 state that no one can arbitrarily reduce an employee's wage without his/her consent.
“Indeed the cited legislation prohibits any reduction of salary and allowances for a worker and as such is protected from unauthorised and unlawful deductions from his/her wages,” he said.
Various clauses stipulate that once a worker has been awarded a salary increment through a Collective Bargaining Agreement registered legally, such an increment cannot be taken back.
“Thus, TSC should stop violating teachers’ rights through such illegalities.”
He reiterated that the bickering between Knut, TSC and the government must end because it portrays Kenya as a banana state without the industrial relations machinery to handle trade disputes.
The Cotu boss regretted, “It is becoming increasingly unreasonable for the parties time and again to wash their dirty linen in public through newspapers.”
He said what the teachers' employer intended to do has as never happened elsewhere. He said an employer cannot renege after awarding a worker a wage increase through a CBA agreement.
Cotu advised the parties not to manage their industrial relations through Employment and Labour Relations courts and newspapers.
He has appealed to the Education CS George Magogha and the Labour and his Social Protection counterpart Ukur Yattani to convene a meeting that will involve Federation of Kenya Employers and COTU to advise TSC and Knut on the way forward.
“Failure to do so, I foresee industrial unrest in the teaching profession that will no doubt affect our education system,” he concluded.
