Argument over JSS Union Membership, KNUT and KUPPET
Argument over JSS Union Membership, KNUT and KUPPET
The Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) and the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) are now at odds over the membership of teachers in junior secondary schools (JSS). The Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) has been chosen by TSC to register JSS teachers, which has drawn the vehement ire of KNUT.
According to KNUT, they consider JSS teachers in public primary schools to be members of their union by default, with the opportunity to freely resign and join KUPPET. The key issue is union membership and how this action may affect KNUT’s capacity to bargain on behalf of its members.
KNUT representatives have warned that if TSC moves forward with its intention to transfer more than 30,000 JSS teachers from KNUT membership to KUPPET, they will take legal action to protect their membership. The union interprets this choice as an attempt to reduce their ability to negotiate on behalf of the rights and welfare of their members.
Mercy Ndung’u, the KNUT’s 2nd National Women Representative, also spoke to the media at Bishop Delany Mixed Secondary School in Eldoret town during the Eldoret West KNUT branch’s Annual General Meeting. This gathering, which brought together union branch leaders from the South Rift and North Rift regions, was mostly organized by Sammy Bor, the Rift Valley regional spokesperson for the National Executive Council.
Due to the current problem, hundreds of JSS instructors who had originally signed up as KNUT members have supposedly been deleted from the union’s membership database.
KNUT members are outraged by this development and worried about how it will affect their union’s finances and capacity to run its operations for the good of all of its members across the nation.
Bor, who is also the union’s Eldoret East branch’s executive secretary, expressed worry that TSC’s measures would weaken KNUT by denying it access to freshly recruited members. In order to preserve industrial harmony, he highlighted the significance of the TSC retaining a neutral posture on union-related issues.
KNUT plans to write to Dr. Nancy Macharia, the Chief Executive Officer of TSC, to ask why JSS teachers were transferred to KUPPET without their permission. This case serves as a reminder of a fundamental disagreement over union participation in the education industry.
