Teachers are ambitious people.
Early this month, they indicated, two months to the national examinations, that they will be asking for their salaries to be tripled in a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA).
Should they have their way in the talks for the 2021-2023 CBA, the least paid teacher, according to the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut), will get Sh65,268 from the current basic pay of Sh27,195.
Knut is saying in the next two years from July 1, 2021, senior principals should get Sh260,000 in basic salary.
The union is also focused on getting a 50 percent raise for house allowance.
The tutors are demanding such generous increments at a time other employers have frozen both employment and salary raises. In the private, the few lucky ones get inflation-adjusted raises of between one and five percent.
The top cream, based on performance appraisals, which the teacher does not want to hear about, may get a 10 percent pay review.
With more than 300,000 teachers under the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), raising pay has always been a matter of life and death, but the tutors have made the demands an annual ritual pushed close to when national exams are starting, making the cycle predictable and hurting the teachers’ chances while portraying mwalimu as unrealistic. Because of timing, they also lose sympathy of their customers, including parents and students.
The Knut demands dwarf what the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) want of between 30 and 70 percent for a 2021-2025 CBA.
Kuppet wants the highest house allawance raised to Sh45,000, but the TSC has said the employer is keen on harmonising house allowances according to job groups and not place of work.
What are the chances of these demands going through? And how much are the tutors likely to get against the backdrop of the government’s attempt at austerity largely affecting the low cadre workers, missed tax collection targets, and the ballooning public debt now at more than Sh5.8 trillion?
Indeed, in the recent past, doctors and nurses have remained out of work for months during strikes while people were dying in hospitals. The humiliation that other government workers have gone through shows teachers, especially those under Knut asking for three times what they earn, are headed for a tough duel with a government already grappling with more than Sh600 billion budget deficit, leading to controversial borrowing like the recent Sh210 billion Eurobond.
Perhaps Kuppet could be making more sense than Knut that is pushing for a hard-to-believe pay request, made worse by their numbers.
Teachers also ought to realise that the government wage bill at more than Sh600 billion was already a thorn in the flesh with continual push for taming the galloping wage bill.
But that is only one side of the story.
Teachers have a point, considering the cost of living, peer pressure, expectations in the society, and the amount of work they put in, especially at a time student enrolment is brimming, what with the subsidised education system where basic items, tuition fees, and national examinations fees is catered for by the government.
Indeed, teachers, as professionals, are past the minimum wage threshold and deserve commensurate pay, the huge annual budget for Education Ministry notwithstanding.
But how much is enough pay? It is unknown since, based on economic fundamentals, wants are unlimited. So, no worker will ever claim they are paid enough even if they were working for the top agencies and development banks.
There is also a need to have a satisfied teacher, who is well motivated to take care of the young who require the best from their handlers.
Teachers are the master builders or moulders who are given delicate learners who, although their minds aren’t a tabula rasa, should be turned into environment-reading individuals who end up becoming presidents and topnotch executives.
Teachers don’t leave the stage; they are the reason you are reading this, having taken the learner through delicate paths, valleys, and up the hilly terrain to socialise and start innovating for today and the future.
So, teachers deserve the best in terms of work environment and remuneration.
There is a general feeling that the teacher is overstretched without corresponding reward. This feeling is supported by teachers’ spending behaviour.
And, learners know this, looking at the teacher’s fashion statement and where their children go to school, for example. In the 80s, they were known to buy assets on hire purchase, including tiny possessions like the manual bicycle and the ‘pressure’ lamp.
In an Education class (people training to teach), a professor asked who voluntarily wanted to become teachers. A paltry two percent said they aspired to be teachers. A startling statistic for a class preparing to join such a crucial profession.
Perhaps, it was time to assess how teachers have been negotiating for more pay.
It is regrettable that because of the tussle between the teachers’ union and the TSC, the Sh54 billion 2017-2021 has not been forthcoming.
There is a need to balance the pay demands and what the employer is likely to offer for incremental gains, if not a huge leap like what the union is asking for.
Teachers ought to reflect on their demands, the parents’ fears, and the employers’ position, the larger society and then call for consultations to come up with a constructive wage proposal that although not permanent, will, in a significant way, reduce frequent conflict on pay.
Each party ought to mean well for society, tied to the push for public gains as opposed to unusual private success. There should be a balance. Let teachers and employer TSC look for it without ugly battles.
