KENYA AIRWAYS SIGNS ADDITIONAL UNION AGREEMENT
News that Kenya Airways and the Aviation and Allied Workers Union had signed a breakthrough agreement this morning in Nairobi, covering aspects of job evaluation and related matters following an earlier ‘return to work’ agreement with AAWU appears to have taken the wind out of the sails of union radicals.
The airline had in the recent past been repeatedly subjected to strike threats by radicals with a political agenda of their own, but a court directive mandated that negotiations had to continue and a strike would be illegal and prompt contempt of court proceedings.
The airline’s CEO Dr. Titus Naikuni had this to say after putting pen to paper and shaking hands with the Union’s Secretary General and the mediators from the Federation of Kenya Employers and the Central Organization of Trade Unions COTU: ‘Kenya Airways has had a cordial relationship with the Aviation and Allied Workers Union and the Central Organization for Trade Unions. We are therefore glad that the job evaluation exercise has been successfully concluded since it was a critical component of the return to work formula we signed in August 2009’. He went on to add that the airline and the union had committed in the agreement to finalize on the remaining aspects of the Collective Bargaining Agreement after the implementation of the Job Evaluation results as soon as possible.
The job evaluation (JE) exercise was done jointly by a team of trained evaluators with representation from both the union and the management levels in the airline. Both Kenya Airways and AAWU participated in the selection and subsequent appointment of the HayGroup Consultants to conduct the training and moderation of the just concluded Job Evaluation process.
This latest agreement underscores the airline’s seriousness during the last round in court when it committed to serious and honest negotiations, something dismissed at the time by union radicals but now proven to be entirely correct.
With any strike threat now removed the airline can concentrate on their corporate strategy of expanding their network and increase frequencies to destinations in demand, a welcome development surely by their growing number of faithful travelers.
