The Kenya Union of Special Needs Education Teachers (Kusnet) has just been recognised by the government through the Teachers Service Commission (TSC). This brings to three the number of notable such unions in Kenya.
While the Kenyan Constitution allows freedom of association, teachers across the country ought to wake up and realise they are headed in the wrong direction as far as worker welfare goes. They are spreading themselves so thin and the TSC will reduce them to smithereens today and tomorrow.
While special needs education is increasingly more crucial, it should occur to tutors and their unions that the proliferation of unions will work against them. It is obvious that professional needs vary, but these should not blind them to the benefits of numbers that could easily influence the outcomes of negotiations for improved welfare.
What stops subject teachers from demanding own groupings while thinking they are fighting for their rights? Mathematics and CRE teachers will soon form a union and possibly walk to the TSC for recognition! These small and little houses cannot dim the bigger teaching profession goals.
Groupings are tenable but they should not go beyond associations where they push for professional development and discussing the finer details of their subject areas. Unions are umbrellas that fight for level playing field at the national level.
The recognition of Kusnet by the government shows the bigger unions — Kenya National Union of Teachers and the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers — must be asleep on the job. They must wake up or perish if they can’t take care of member special needs and special categories.
“Following the agreement [with TSC] Kusnet will start receiving agency fees for special needs education teachers who are non-aligned,” James Torome, the new union’s secretary said.
There are more than 200,000 teachers who are not members of any union in Kenya. Special needs teachers number more than 10,000 and more than 8,000 are already in Kusnet.
Of course, the unlocking of the agency fees is an important step in oiling the wheels of the union since the special needs teachers had complained against deductions before the Kusnet was recognised.
Across the world, labour unions are going through a rough patch with the employers becoming cleverer by burning the midnight oil in taming the unions that keep demanding new Collecting Bargaining Agreements (CBAs) while governments were demanding austerity.
So, governments have noticed negotiation skills gaps and have become firmer using experts to unravel the union arguments about better salaries, better allowances, and even shorter working hours.
These come at a cost, but workers cannot do without them because economic and social demands keep getting steeper and it is only through water-tight bargaining backed by numbers that they will confront the bolder employers.
Under such circumstances, it is so scary that some teachers were going to war alone with leaner but considerably teams while the employer was swashbuckling, more imposing and more intimidating but holding the purse strings tightly.
Knut, Kuppet and now Kusnet ought to rethink strategies and operations towards taking care of every member’s needs and aspirations while accommodating their suggestions. Anything else is akin to failed leadership and soon another small union will emerge, leaving the TSC with very light work of flooring the unions. The writing is on the wall, walimu.
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