Collective Bargaining Agreements and Equity

Aren’t the Hindrances to Teacher’s Grade Promotion in Kenya Surmountable?

Abstract

The approval of two implementation approaches by unions in their bid to implement a joint Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA)ofteachers in Kenya, for 2017-2021, was meant to boost equity in promotions. Whereas the scheme of service approachwasforKenyaNational Union of Teachers, the Career Progression Guideline approach was for the Kenya Union of Post Primary EducationTeachers,both of which are domiciled in secondary schools. Since an emphasis was put on academic qualification, the annual declineinaccesstopromotions from 12.9% in 2016 to 5.2% in 2020 with a job stagnation of 15.7 years per grade casts doubts on its effectiveness.Inaddressing this concern, this article is theoretically guided by Walton and McKersie’s behavioral theory for labour negotiations.Itutilizes a sample of 1,569 respondents who were drawn from a study population of 5,923. Systematic randomsamplingsawtheselection of teachers in each union. It was based on the chronological order of their TSC numbers. Content validity andinternalconsistency reliability were enhanced with a co-efficient of 0.877. In data analysis, pairwise correlation establishedthatunionmembership, academic qualifications and grade promotions had plausible interactions. Logistic regression analysis establishedastatistically significant difference in equity between the two unions, based on academic qualifications, with Career ProgressionGuideline reducing the odds of promotion to the next grade by up to 22.58% in KUPPET. The research article ascertainedamarginallyequitable promotion distribution in KUPPET than KNUT, with gini coefficient of 0.0567 and 0.0698 respectively. Consequently,itrecommends a harmonization of the two approaches so as to convert it into one single entity.