Universities Brace For Disruption As Lecturers Set Dates For Strike

Public university lecturers across Kenya are bracing for a nationwide walkout after the Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU) fired off a seven-day strike notice, setting the stage for classes to grind to a halt from the end of the month.

UASU Secretary-General Constantine Wasonga confirmed on Thursday that the industrial action will kick off at midnight on September 30, blaming the government for dragging its feet on the 2025-2029 Collective Bargaining Agreement.

At the heart of the dispute is a broken promise, according to the union. University councils, the Ministry of Education, and the National Treasury have all failed to make good on the Return-to-Work Formula that was signed back on November 5, 2025, and that failure, UASU says, has left it with no option but to call the strike.

“This painful decision follows the persistent failure by the councils of universities, the Ministry of Education, and the National Treasury to honour the Return-to-Work Formula signed on 5th November 2025,” the union said in its notice.

Beyond the missed deadline, UASU points to a deeper problem: there’s still no financial counter-proposal on the table for the new CBA, even though talks have dragged on for close to a year. Other public sector workers have already wrapped up their own 2025-2029 agreements. University lecturers, meanwhile, are still waiting.

The union says things came to a head after a meeting with the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) on Monday, September 21.

During that meeting, SRC reportedly told university-sector unions that it had received no written assurance from either the Ministry of Education or the Treasury that money for the CBAs would actually flow through the National Exchequer.

“SRC said that it could not therefore issue the constitutional advice required to facilitate financial counter-proposals to the Unions,” the union stated.

UASU didn’t stop there. It also questioned what exactly has been going on in the negotiations at Machakos University over the past year, suggesting SRC’s disclosure casts doubt on whether those talks were proceeding in good faith.

This isn’t the first warning shot; back on August 14, UASU cautioned that a strike was on the cards if the government didn’t move on the agreement that was originally supposed to be signed and sealed in November 2025. More than a month later, it’s still not done, and now the union is following through.

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