Knut Secretary General Mr Wilson Sossion has raised concern over a huge decline in Knut membership. Mr Sossion has said Knut has lost more than seventy eight per cent of members since August 2019. Sossion blames the teachers employer TSC for the dwindling numbers. He said Knut started losing members immediately TSC introduced parallel payrolls that discriminated on salary benefits. He said the courts did not discriminate on who should be paid and who should not be paid in the CBA 2017 – 2021 which they signed in 2016.
However school administrators who are members of Knut have not been receiving the CBA benefits in phase one, two, three and last one which was paid last month. Teachers in job grade B5 also missed in July automatic promotions. Parliament had allocated shs 54 billion for promotions of teachers but TSC said it cannot pay members of Knut due to a court order.
In August last year TSC had warned that members of Knut will be paid based on Schemes of Service which would result to them losing benefits of the CBA. Most teachers decided to quit the union after numerous activities that put then in a disadvantaged point. When TSC advertised for administrative positions one of the requirement was for teachers to be under CPG (Career Progression guidelines) which barred Knut members from ascending to such positions. TSC insists the courts gave it a greenlight to implement CPG but not force Knut members to be placed in CPG which led it to have dual payrolls.
Sossion had warned branch officials who had ceased to be members after they authorized TSC to stop union deductions.
“It has come to our notice that some of our branch officials ceased to be members of this union. Please note that failure to comply by above directive by June 30th 2020 will be assumed that you have forfeited your membership and position in the union,” warned Sossion through a circular to branch officials.
The union is facing a litmus test with internal wrangles rocking it from bottom. Sossion has instructed TSC to pay teachers the salary benefits without descimination since the shs 54 billion was already allocated for that in Parliament.