Kenyan University Workers’ Unions must talk to the Government

By Jeff Kanani, Ajabu Africa News, posted November 15, 2011

The Kenyan public universities’ lecturers’ strike has entered its second week with concerned parties choosing to spend more time publicly ripping each other apart. There is no scheduled official meeting between the employer - the government of Kenya - and the union representatives - at least for now.

Communication channels have completely broken down. It seems like the unions are tired of talking while the government is tired of listening. Both parties are now spending more time with their families rather than talking to each other.

In fact, since the strike began eight days ago there hasn’t been any official meeting besides the one held between the junior union officials and the Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

Senior union officials have since publicly disowned the meeting as a photo opportunity for the prime minister. It turned out that the meeting was not only a disruption but also that both the junior officials and the prime minister had little knowledge about the sticking points.

In the meantime, students, parents, scholarship providers and university related research project funders are waiting and calculating the new costs of a public university education and conducting research in Kenya.

While the lecturers’ demands are like any other working person would like to have, the issue isn’t about the quality of education. It’s not even about research and the discovery of new knowledge at our universities. Neither is it about the denial of free speech nor free expression as it frequently happened in the 80s.

Rather, the unions are angered by the goofy promises that the government made about money. More money.

The biggest losers and perhaps the most important component of a university community are the students and the funders of related research projects. If both of these groups are deleted, the universities cease to exist. The two stakeholders provide revenue to justify the existence of a university. If they stay away from public universities because the institutions have become tense, uncertain and too expensive, the lecturers will have no jobs.

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One of the unions’ demands, which I quite frankly think that it sounds like children conversation is that they want to meet with specific members of the government. Such a condition is not just noise but it also flies in the face of common sense.

The spirit of negotiation is that each side chooses members who best represent their interests. It’s foolish for the university workers’ unions to rewrite the laws of good faith negotiations at this time.

As I read, listen and learn, the government has not asked the lecturers to surrender or to give up their demands. It has asked the lecturers to go back to their classrooms as the union leaders keep talking to find reasonable ways to meet the new economic and spending challenges the government faces.

By their nature of existence, workers’ unions are established on the premise that they will always ask employers to spend more, not less.

The toughest world economies are grappling with austerity measures that are threatening to bring down governments.  Every citizen of the world is being asked to give up something. It’s time for these unions to evaluate their value systems and humanity. People will continue to ask if unions can partner with governments and organizations in rebuilding economies.

 I have never supported a big government wage bill but I still think that these unions can find a way to negotiate with the government of Kenya.

The lecturers’ public perception is even a bigger issue.

We all know that unions have a right to exist and that workers have a right to join them but seeing images of lecturers shoving their colleagues in front of television cameras and flushing others out through skinny doors and dangling windows are despicable. This is one step removed from street thugs on a payroll.

Such images are foreign to the Kenyan general public accustomed to seeing university professors portrayed as glamorous.

The lecturers denied their colleagues freedom to choose. They forced their colleagues to join in a demonstration in a free country. No lecturer is above the law and no one is below it. Even when aggrieved, obedience to the law is demanded as a right. 

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The actions reinforce the public perception that these professionals are arrogant and out of touch with the reality.

The unions need to do more to negotiate to safeguard their members’ jobs and preserve the quality of our education. They should work hard to meet the government representatives and not deciding who to meet.

Ordinary Kenyans may not know the terms of the previous negotiations but the unions need to be reminded that economic conditions under which they negotiated have changed.

 Governments all over the world use the current economic formula to meet their financial obligations. The formula has changed with the global economic turmoil and that is why these unions need to renegotiate and not to spend time choosing who from the government should be listening.

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