Teachers during last year’s national strike over pay. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
Teachers on Monday submitted to the Industrial Court a list of 39 demands, key among which is the petition for a pay increase of between 150 and 200 per cent.
They also want the allowances to be computed as a percentage of their salaries as opposed to flat rates as offered by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC).
The court will make a decision on whether to increase the tutors’ basic pay after receiving memos from the teachers’ unions, TSC and the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC).
Teachers now want their basic pay more than doubled, presenting a puzzle for the Industrial Court that has to balance between meeting their demand for higher salaries and the economy’s ability to support the ballooning national wage bill.
The Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) and the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) on Monday submitted to the court a list of 39 demands, key among which is the petition for a pay increase of between 150 and 200 per cent.
The court will make a decision on whether to increase the tutors’ basic pay after receiving memos from the teachers’ unions, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC).
“The basic component in our proposal is a rise in salaries by between 150 and 200 per cent,” said Knut secretary-general Wilson Sossion after filing the memo.
The unions also want the allowances to be computed as a percentage of their salaries as opposed to flat rates as offered by TSC. This came as learning resumed Monday in public schools after a two- week strike.
As per the proposal, highest earning teachers in job group R will be entitled to a monthly pay of between Sh282,705 and Sh321,705 up from the current range of between Sh109,089 and Sh138,501.
The lowest paid teachers in job group G will be entitled to a range of between Sh58,863 and Sh68,355, up from between Sh16,692 and Sh24,304 a month currently.
The unions also want the job groups of teachers to move to S and T, with entitlement of up to Sh383,705 a month in basic pay.
But the SRC has warned that the demands of the over 280,000 teachers could push the public sector wage bill from the current Sh568 billion up to Sh823 billion, or about 90 per cent of the country’s revenue.
The current teachers’ wage bill stands at about Sh161.1 billion. The TSC has in recent weeks insisted the teachers’ salaries have been harmonised with the rest of civil servants and a review could only be done after evaluation of the tutors’ jobs.
Last week, the court settled for mediation in the pay dispute and directed that the parties file with it memos on their pay demands following failure by the government to end a strike that paralysed learning for the first 10 days of the first term of the year.
“We have applied for the benefits to be backdated to July 2013, at the commencement of the CBA, to June 30th 2017,” said Mr Sossion.
The teachers also want all job groups to be given a responsibility allowance, which is currently awarded to those in job groups K to S. Knut and Kuppet propose that school heads get a responsibility allowance equal to 40 per cent of their pay, their deputies 30 per cent.
They also want departmental heads to get a responsibility allowance equal to 20 per cent of their pay, and class teachers 10 per cent of their pay.
PAYE Tax Calculator
Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
