adminParents associations need to have clear selection criteria for people to serve in the committee responsible for managing the parents association.
Key amongst the skills required are knowledge of labour law and labour relations so as to be able to manage human resources correctly to add value to the school.
There are also other equally important skills such as financial, education and technical.
Some parents associations today are battling with litigation because they have not adhered to the minimum conditions of employment set out in the Collective
Bargaining Agreement for the industry.
In fact the majority of school development associations do not even have the principal collective bargaining agreement.
This has resulted in associations paying huge amounts of money to workers over issues that could have been avoided.
There are cases where some associations have created own grading systems, salary structures and conditions of service which are outside the Collective Bargaining
Agreements resulting in huge costs for parents when disputes arise or when the school tries to fall in line with National Employment Council set conditions.
Some associations have been pushed by unions to pay money they should not be paying workers out of fear or being misled.
Where schools development association members are knowledgeable the union is not feared but they become labour relations management partners.
One of the worst managed things by schools is works council meeting and agreements because both the employer and workers are not trained.
In the majority of cases workers come out better as there will be no record of meetings or agreements made and where records exist they can easily be disputed because they were not signed.
There are also cases where the associations have released workers committee members for training by the unions resulting in workers being knowledgeable of their rights thus causing problems for the employer who is not trained.
The way forward for school development associations is to ensure that all new members of the School Development Associations management committees are trained
in Labour Relations and Labour Litigation by a competent individual.
While it costs money, in my view, it is cheaper than what schools pay as the cost of correcting errors.
School Development Associations should also ensure that all matters related to workers are dealt with professionally guided by someone who knows the law and procedures especially in areas such as wage payment, exemption payment, grading of employment, payments of wages, hours of work, leave management, grievance handling, dispute resolution and discipline handling.
Today many schools are battling with back pay that is related periods before they become parents at particular schools simply because parents who were there at the time did not do their work properly or they failed to apply for exemption or where application for exemption was done, the employers failed to present a convincing argument to the NEC.
Some do not even know they have the right to approach the Labour Court to force the NEC to deal with their application for exemption if the delay is unreasonable.
In conclusion, parents have to ensure that they have competent men and women serving their School Development Association management committees and have to be prepared to invest in committees development.
Online Reporter