Kenya Socialist Web Site
1st May 2003
LABOUR DAY: MAJOR ISSUES FOR KENYAN WORKERS
Kenyan Workers are celebrating
this year’s Labour Day at a highly disadvantaged position. The celebration
comes at a time when the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) with 240,000
members has issued a July strike notice to the newly elected government of
the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc). The regime has refused to implement
a pay package that the teachers won after they downed their tools in 1998
to demand a pay rise during the dictatorship of Daniel arap Moi.
The labour day celebrations are also being held against a backdrop of an
ongoing strike by locomotive drivers employed by the Kenya Railways Corporation.
The drivers are demanding a salary increment of 25% that was awarded more
than seven years ago by an Industrial court but which has not been implemented
because the government claims that it has no money. The strike paralysed
the railway network in the country forcing the Corporation to hire scabs
from the pool of retired drivers to try and break the strike. Just as their
teachers counterparts who have been waiting for 5 years for their salary
increments, the drivers feel cheated that their salary hike has not been
forth coming after seven years of waiting.
For the Narc government, this year’s Labour day is a tense moment because
on Friday April 25th, Doctors demanded that their pay be increased from Ksh
60,000 to 300,000 while they also called for the establishment of a Health
Service Commission to carter for the remuneration of Health professionals
in the country.
The government is unable to pay teachers because it claims that it has not
received money from IMF and World Bank and fresh calls from Doctors that
their salaries be increased with a margin of Ksh 240,000 is likely to cause
lots of indigestion to the Kibaki Administration. In fact, the best
the government can hope for is that Doctors will not issue a strike notice
or collaborate with teachers to stage a joint strike in July as a way of
getting the government to act. Such a move would impact on other workers
to take similar actions especially those whose strike actions have already
been defeated through silence and inaction by the government.
Strikes are becoming a natural option for marginalised and exploited
workers
Apart from the thorny issue of the implementation of the Teacher’s salary
allowances and fresh demands by Doctors for a pay hike, this year’s Labour
day is coming at a time when the Kenya Sugar Cane Growers Association (KESGA)
has just called off the Cane farmers strike which lasted for two months.
The farmers were demanding higher prices for cane deliveries. It appears
that the strike was called off after KESGA leadership was compromised because
there was no official explanation for the calling off of the strike.
To be precise, strikes are increasingly becoming a natural option for marginalised
and exploited workers in Kenya. In fact, the fundamental question is how
a political alternative capable of converting the strikes into a struggle
for power by Kenyan workers can materialise. As we write, employees from
five Coffee cooperative societies in Gucha location in Kisii district are
on strike demanding payment of outstanding dues for 27 months. According
to press reports, the workers have totally paralysed operations at the giant
coffee processing factories in Bomachoge constituency while the workers have
also vowed to resume duty only after their pending dues are settled.
It is like every worker in Kenya wants the wage situation reviewed or changed
altogether. On Friday April 14th, the Kenya Veterinary Association demanded
that their salaries be reviewed. Although the Association did not issue a
strike threat, the message was the same – that the government should expect
action if it cannot act.
Strike threats and demands for higher wages aside, other significant developments
have also been taking place within the workers movement in Kenya. The Kenya
Electrical Trades and Allied Workers Union (Ketawu) has opposed a plan to
retrench 900 workers from the giant State owned Kenya Power and Lightning
Company (KPLC) that has also been earmarked for privatisation. The retrenchment
plan was announced last month by Mr. Ochillo Ayako, the Minister of Energy,
an announcement that created panic among workers at the company. The planned
retrenchment is evidence that privatisation means loss of jobs.
The situation was so tense that Mr. Samuel Njiru, a top official of Ketawu,
had to issue a statement saying that “liquidity problems facing the industry
are unlikely to be sorted out through staff reductions”. Ironically, the
retrenchments were being planned at a time when, according to Mr. Njiru,
KPLC was understaffed. The planned retrenchment is a contradiction of an
electoral pledge by the Narc government to create half a million jobs every
year while it also undermines President Kibaki's message last month that
since Narc took power, 7,000 jobs have been created. What Kenyans are witnessing
as the new government stumbles on is a situation where instead of creating
more jobs to try and put the 11 million unemployed Kenyans to work, the government
is axing existing jobs thereby increasing the level of unemployment.
Strike actions have ended in defeat because Workers are politically
unorganised
We could go on and on. But the major issues for Kenyan workers include a
struggle against starvation wages, lack of political representation, lack
of proper remuneration sufficient for a decent standard of living, violation
of the right to collective bargaining, lack of job security and lack of freedom
to form independent and fighting Trade Unions with full rights to link up
with International Workers organisations.
The big illusion drawing the Workers’ struggle backwards is that workers
believe that the liberal bourgeoisie opportunists they elect to Parliament
at each and every election can represent them and struggle for a change of
their poor economic and social conditions. Teachers voted as a block believing
that a Narc government would implement their salary allowances in January.
But after being betrayed and told that they have to wait for ten years, and
after witnessing MPs raise their monthly salaries to almost a million Kenyan
shillings immediately after the ninth Parliament was opened, teachers have
resorted to the tactics they used against the former dictatorship of Daniel
arap Moi - strike action. KSDA has already welcomed the July strike notice.
From our perspective, strike actions alone are not enough to change the immediate
situation of workers in Kenya. Since January this year, at least 30 industrial
actions by frustrated workers have been witnessed in Kenya with some strikes
spilling over into the streets and turning violent. In extreme cases, riot
police have been called in to brutalise workers demanding higher wages. But
all these actions have ended in defeat and many of the demands that were
being made by striking workers were not met. This is because Trade Unions
are weak while Kenyan Workers are not yet organised politically under a Worker’s
Party to fight for their interests. Without new initiatives, the situation
will not change. Our position is that there is need for workers to be represented
in Parliament so that their interests can be raised and debated directly
by workers’ representatives practicing politics under a Workers’ Party armed
with a Workers program of action. Because of their key role in production
of wealth, workers deserve a say in the running of the government and distribution
of resources.
Kenyan workers are celebrating this year's Labour day with a deep sense of
dejection. They continue to live in poverty while the Unions, which are supposed
to represent them and fight for their interests, have a long tradition of
working with a corrupt government after their leaders were bought off by
State agents. A pathetic example is the Central Organisation of Trade
Unions (COTU) that was effectively an extension of the Moi/KANU dictatorship
which was defeated in the December elections. Thousands of workers in Kenya
have been retrenched under IMF/World Bank programs without Union or State
intervention. Wages are low, remunerations are poor while certain basic rights
like the right to form or join a Union do not exists for many workers.
As workers celebrate Labour day, our solidarity goes to the suffering Kenyan
teachers preparing for their July strike action, the exploited seafarers
whose efforts to link up with International workers' organisations have been
frustrated by the Kenyan government for years, marginalised long distance
truck drivers working under impossible conditions, EPZ workers who were sacked
after downing their tools to demand higher wages, Tax collectors whose grievances
have been ignored for years, Oral workers whose salaries have not been adjusted
for decades and Locomotive drivers currently on strike in Kenya. We remember
all retrenched workers from different sectors as a result of IMF/World Bank
programs and casual workers who have been denied the right to permanent employment
after holding their jobs for more than a decade.
This year’s Labour day should serve as another reminder to workers in Kenya
that they need to organise and compete for political power because leaving
their crucial interests on the hands of wealth grabbers and other looters
in Parliament has not delivered a single victory. Throughout the world,
workers are struggling to capture State power and Kenyan workers should not
be left behind.
Okoth Osewe
Secretary,
Kenya Socialist Democratic Alliance (KSDA
Published by Kenya Socialist Democratic Alliance
(KSDA)
email: harakatips@hotmail.com
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