Sign CBA in one month or face fresh strike, lecturers tell government

By  Lynet Igadwah

Senior Reporter

Nation Media Group

University lecturers have given the government one month to conclude and sign the 2025–2029 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), setting the stage for another labour dispute if negotiations fail.

The lecturers, through the Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU), on Friday expressed frustration over delays in receiving a financial counter-offer, saying the impasse was creating anxiety among its members.

UASU Secretary-General Constantine Wasonga said the union had extended its patience but would issue a seven-day strike notice if the agreement was not concluded within a month.

“We are giving the IPUCCF (Inter Public Universities Councils Consultative Forum) and government exactly one month from today to negotiate, sign, register and implement the 2025–2029 CBA, failure to which we shall issue a seven-day strike notice,” Dr Wasonga said.

The ultimatum echoes delays witnessed during the previous CBA cycle. Although UASU submitted its proposals for the 2021–2025 agreement in good time, the deal was not signed until November 23, 2024, with the government committing to implement the financial component in phases.

The first phase, amounting to Sh3.4 billion, was paid in January 2025.

Dr Wasonga noted that public universities were facing a crisis caused by a convergence of challenges, including the absence of a 2025–2029 CBA, systemic underfunding, inadequate staffing, excessive workloads and failure to honour retirement-age provisions contained in the registered agreement.

He said the union would not extend the deadline or return to dialogue once the one-month period elapsed, arguing that UASU had already given the negotiating parties sufficient time.

The union Secretary-General also accused the Inter-Public Universities Councils Consultative Forum (IPUCCF) of frustrating negotiations by sending representatives whom he claimed were not committed to collective bargaining.

“Virtually all the vice-chancellors we are negotiating with in Machakos do not have registered CBAs in their respective chapters, so they were sent there to come and stall this CBA,” he said.

Dr Wasonga further alleged that the IPUCCF and the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) were taking similar positions in the negotiations.

“If you check, IPUCCF recommendation is word for word the advice from SRC calling for retention of the same figures, so who is advising who?” he posed, saying the union would oppose any attempt to impose the IPUCCF's position through the SRC.

The union wants the SRC to consider submissions from both IPUCCF and UASU before issuing its advice, and for that advice to leave room for the parties to negotiate.

The current impasse highlights the longstanding question of how university staff salaries should be financed amid persistent funding constraints in public universities.

The Presidential Working Party on Education Reform, in its report, noted a disconnect in discussions on salaries for university staff, which had contributed to payroll-related debts in some universities.

The report observed that the factors considered by the SRC in determining salaries did not include the ability of individual universities to pay. The Ministry of Education and the National Treasury should provide budget estimates before negotiations begin.

“Unfortunately, this has not been the case, and the budget has remained more or less the same over the years,” the report stated.

UASU also rejected the possibility of financing CBAs through student fees, arguing that lecturers are public employees whose remuneration should be funded by the Exchequer.

“Suppose the students don’t pay fees now that they changed the funding model and suppose the one that’s being proposed is changed again, what happens to our CBAs?” Dr Wasonga asked.

The recently published Tertiary Education, Placement and Funding Bill, 2026, does not provide a mechanism for financing the remuneration of academic staff, leaving the question of how future salary agreements will be funded unresolved.

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