The chairperson of the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) Sarah Serem has termed premature strike threats and notices issued by unions representing civil servants and medical professionals over the job evaluation report. She has called on them to withdraw the notices and wait until all details are released before they make any judgments.
The commission released the job evaluation report for the public sector last week, which reviewed salaries for public servants and adopted a new grading structure that will be used by employers to determine the pay in public service.
After the release of the report, the Association of Public Sector Unions of Kenya, the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) and the Kenya National Union of Nurses said they were not involved in the evaluation and that the report did not meet their expectations, leading to the workers in the health sector to issue a 21-day strike notice.
However, Serem told People Daily and sister TV station K24 the Commission did not release the full details of the evaluation to warrant threat from the unions. “On Friday, we only launched the report to the public to mark the end of our engagement with the consultant who was working on the job evaluation exercise.
We have not shared the details of the report and I wonder what anybody would reject,” she said, adding: “Nobody else knows the details of the job evaluation exercise and the benefits that have come out of it. Until we share this, people cannot come out and say it does not meet their expectations,” she added.
She further said it is not the duty of the commission to announce civil servants’ salaries. “Ours is to advice so the employers and unions can have dialogue the same way teachers and their employer used our evaluation to negotiate for a new package,” she said.
The SRC chair said they have scheduled clinics with employing agencies and stakeholders to analyse the report and discuss implementation under the new job grading structure.
The post You jumped the gun, Serem tells unions on strike appeared first on Mediamax Network Limited.