Over 190,000 Unregistered Teachers To Pay For KNUT, KUPPET Membership, Here Are the New Fees

According to the newly signed 2021-2025 Collective Bargaining Agreement, CBA, teachers who are not members of the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) and the Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) will be required to pay agency fees to continue enjoying the perks.

Over 190,000 teachers are not members of both KNUT and KUPPET. This is the last resort of the union, which is reportedly short on cash. KNUT and KUPPET attribute this to an apparent inability to receive agency fees since June 2019.

In this period, KNUT endured squabbles with the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) which followed a split. KNUT has however announced plans to revive the submission of agency fees to fund its daily operations.

In accordance with the Labour Relations Act, 14 of 2007, a trade union that has signed a recognition agreement with TSC, shall have it’s due deducted from the salaries of its members who have joined voluntary, signed, and then submitted a prescribed membership from an authorized to commission to deduct union due at the source.

TSC is required to deduct then pay to trade union an agency from the salary of every unionizable employee who is not a member of the union but has benefited from CBA that is negotiated and conclude between the union and the commission as per part VI of the Labour Relation Act of 14 of 2007

On July 1^st, 2021, auctioneers raided KNUT headquarters along Mfangano Street in Nairobi and took equipment and furniture worth 1.4 million shillings. Additionally, the union’s secretaries across the country had not been paid in two years.

KNUT’s laws require non-members to remit 2 percent of their basic salaries to have access to the benefits of a negotiated CBA. KUPPET requires a remission of 1.45 percent from the basic salaries of non-members.

KUPPET reported that there are 3,000 non-member teaching personnel across Kenya’s secondary schools and higher learning institutions. They are liable to remit agency fees to the union.

A third party has the responsibility of stopping deductions of employees who has his/her liability to the firm.

A third party does not stop a deduction as stipulated in sub-clause 12.1 above. The commission upon receiving authenticated instruction from the employees shall stop the deduction without reference to the third party.

When a stop order is not affected and the overpayment is made to the third party, the same shall be recovered from the third-party subsequence remittance and refunded to the employee.