16th March 2016 is a VERY important day. The day marks the dateline that was set by the Appeal Court on 6 November 2015.
The exercise on teachers kicked off on 7 March 2016. It is an exercise that has a lot of bearing from a legal point of view considering the 6th November 2015 Court of Appeal ruling.
As per the ruling of 6 November 2016, the Court of Appeal ordered that SRC should table its job evaluation report within 90 days.
Therefore, the 90 days (Working days) will elapse next week Wednesday.
Remember that the appeal court ruling of 6 November 2015 eventually resulted in the nullification of the 50-60%
As per the ruling, the attainment of a CBA that can pass the constitutionality test should be signed in-keeping with the order of the following events.
- SRC conducts a job evaluation.
- Intergrating the evaluation findings in the CBA negotiations.
- Seeking the advice of SRC during the negotiations
- Fully implementing the over-arching advice of SRC.
Judge Martha Koome ruled that SRC needs to carry out job evaluation of teachers in order to facilitate a CBA agreement andthe report tabled before the Court of Appeal within 90 days (From 6 November 2015).
Schematically
Schematically, the pathway towards attainment of a CBA based on the 6 November 2015 ruling is as follows;
SRC conducts evaluation on teachers
↓
↓
SRC’s job evaluation report tabled before Court
↓
↓
Efforts to finalize a CBA initiated
↓
↓
Enforcement of the CBA
As you can see from above, it is like everything is lost in a desert plain as at now. SRC is NOT going to meet the dateline set by the Court of Appeal. Therefore, from a legal point of view, the CBA for teachers is at level zero.
There have been negotiations here and there between TSC and KNUT but they are all sketchy without factoring in the provisions of the 6th November 2015 court ruling. The negotiations are legally null and void without the blessings of SRC as demonstrated in the schematic above.