The Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU) has rejected a government counter offer that proposed a 1.75 percent increase in basic pay for four years, with no raise on the house allowance deal.
The counter-offer tabled by the Inter-Public Universities Councils Consultative Forum (IPUCCF) negotiating team Chairman Isaac Mbeche further showed that lecturers will get an annual basic salary increment of 0.43 percent. The union’s Secretary General Constantine Wasonga described the document as not representing a counteroffer and stressed that the tutors would reject it totally.
“UASU would like to draw your attention to the following. The document ignores and does not address the issues in the UASU 2017-2021 CBA proposal. For the record, objectives of the salary review in the proposal were to improve the transparency of the academic staff salary structure to reduce the level of compressions and inversions; enhance academic salaries towards parity with equivalent staff within the universities and in other public sector organizations,” he stated.
The lecturers have now asked the Labour Ministry Conciliator to issue the parties with a certificate of disagreement and refer the matter to the Employment and Labour Relations Court for determination.
The union leadership is now set to meet on Wednesday to discuss the way forward on the ongoing mass action. Currently, the highest paid professor takes home Sh248,898 while the least paid academic staff an assistant lecturer earns Sh82,037.
UASU wants the lowest paid lecturer to earn Sh195,000 and highest to take home Sh1 million.
On mortgages and car loans, the proposal states that individual university councils will negotiate with their respective UASU chapters.
This article was first posted on Capital News, and was written by Simon Ndonga.
