The return-to-work agreement signed between university lecturers, non-academic staff, and the government appears, on the surface, to mark the end of a protracted dispute. Students will resume classes, salaries will be restored, and negotiations for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) are scheduled to take place within 30 days. Yet beneath the calm language of policy and procedure lies a familiar pattern of pressure, concession, and incomplete victory—one that has defined the relationship between organized labor and the Kenyan ruling establishment for decades. To understand this deal, one must look beyond the printed clauses and into the ideological framework that shapes such outcomes.
A Settlement That Resolves the Present but Protects the Status Quo
The lecturers and non-academic staff had been on strike due to wage erosion, delayed salary adjustments, and deteriorating working conditions in public universities. Their demands were not unreasonable; they were rooted in the basic principle that those who produce and sustain the intellectual labour of the nation deserve dignity and fair compensation. However, after 40 days of disruption, the workers were persuaded to return to work through a two-phased payment agreement, coupled with a promise that negotiations for the 2023–2025 CBA would be concluded “within 30 days.” This promise, however, is not new. It is a recurring feature of previous return-to-work formulas—most of which resulted in partial compliance, delayed implementation, or renegotiation under new economic pressures.
The state’s willingness to sign such agreements should not be misread as benevolence. It reflects the ruling class’s need to restore stability in institutions whose dysfunction threatens both economic continuity and political legitimacy. Public universities not only educate workers; they also train future administrators, professionals, and bureaucrats who sustain the national economic order. A prolonged shutdown does not simply inconvenience students—it interrupts the reproduction of labour necessary for the functioning of Kenyan capitalism. Thus, the state intervenes not to protect lecturers’ welfare, but to restore predictability to a system that relies on their labour while suppressing their power to demand its full value.
Why Return-to-Work Deals Restore Order Without Shifting Power
The two-phased Sh3.85 billion settlement demonstrates this compromise. While it offers short-term relief, it shifts the financial burden into future budget cycles, leaving room for deferral, renegotiation, or reversal when economic conditions tighten. The emphasis on “consultation with the National Treasury” is not a technicality—it is the mechanism through which workers’ struggles are subordinated to fiscal discipline. The state’s fiscal discipline is, in practice, the discipline of profit, debt repayment, and budget austerity. Workers’ livelihoods come second.
Ideologically, the deal reinforces the notion that labour disputes must always end within the confines of state and employer-defined “reasonability.” The lecturers are celebrated for returning to work, and the government is praised for resolving the crisis through dialogue. Yet the core contradiction remains untouched: the wealth generated by the education sector—through research, tuition fees, and the production of skilled labour—flows upward, while those who develop it continue to struggle. The ruling class opposes strikes not simply because they disrupt services, but because they expose the material conflict at the heart of society: those who labour and those who profit from that labour are not aligned in interest.
The cyclic nature of these strikes reveals a deeper structural point. Each time workers build momentum, negotiate, and return to work, the state emerges intact, the universities return to normal function, and the underlying imbalance of power remains unchanged. Worker’s leaders, operating within the constraints of institutional negotiation, are vulnerable to compromise—not always through corruption, but through the internal logic of the system itself. They are required to deliver stability, not transformation.
The Need for a Unified Workers’ Political Force Beyond Sectoral Struggles
This is why the call for a workers’ party is not sentimental or rhetorical—it is strategic. As long as workers negotiate from fragmented organizations, confined to sectoral interests and short-term struggles, the state and capitalist class will continue to dictate the terms of settlement. A workers’ party would unify lecturers, health workers, factory workers, public servants, and the unemployed into a single political force capable of shaping state priorities rather than reacting to them. Such a party would recognize that labour disputes are not merely about wages; they concern who controls national wealth and for what purpose.
Absent such organization, the cycle will repeat: strikes will occur, agreements will be signed, promises will be delayed, and workers will return to the picket line. The lesson from this deal is clear. Gains can be won, but they remain fragile unless embedded in a broader struggle to transform the structure of power. The future of the university sector—and of all labour in Kenya—depends on whether workers remain reactive or choose to organize as a class determined to govern society in their own interests.
Kenya Red Alliance