Employer must show commitment to improving teachers’ lives

YESTERDAY marked the third day of our collective job action and we would like to congratulate our members on the successes scored thus far.

This is after the Primary and Secondary Education ministry had promised to review our salaries and failed to do so.

As a union, we wrote to them demanding an urgent salary review, which they once again promised.

This week, government responded to our letter through the Finance ministry and the Public Service Commission.

Both responses were opaque and showed low degree of firm commitment, but the great thing is that our action got them to respond.

Government also promised to increase the United States dollar component by US$25.

Equally, our process has managed to expose that the employer is not negotiating in good faith.

In that regard, we continue to demand genuine collective bargaining platforms, where legitimate stakeholders and actors are included.

We note the escalation of victimisation of our members, especially after other unions had long pulled out of the agreed collective job action.

This, therefore, serves as a lesson on the need to recruit and grow our membership as a union. The steady growth we are experiencing is encouraging and very soon, we will wield enough power to force the employer to give in to our demands.

Conclusively, we thank all our members for their undying commitment to the struggle for a fair living wage.

Unfortunately, we cannot go it alone, after other unions betrayed us.

We advise all our members to return to the work place.

There, we start to recruit more teachers and start organising for the next phase of action.

Aluta continua!