If there is any one person who breathed a sigh of relief with the coming into being of a new constitution, it is the Kenyan worker and the trade union leadership in general. But the celebration was a short lived event as brief history illustrates.
Section 41 of the new Kenyan constitution categorically states that every person has the right to fair labour practices amongst which include fair remuneration, reasonable working conditions, right to form or join or participate in the activities and programmes of a trade union and can go on strike. Part 5 of the same section categorically states that every trade union, employers’ organization and employer has the right to engage in collective bargaining.
The word in the document sounds sweet to the ear but evidence shows that it is easier said than done. Few Kenyan workers have access to the rights stated in the supreme law as demonstrated in the recent strikes by doctors, academic staff and teachers. With unparallel impunity, employers violate those rights day and night.
Notwithstanding the new dawn, colonial and dictatorial practices exist in society and particularly in the employment sector where workers earn slave wages, reside in informal settlements and striking workers threatened with dismissals or locked out.
Like many employers in the country, Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK) is one such living example of a colonial and dictatorial relic. Either out of ignorance or outright defiance, PCK declared staff strike illegal and locked out 592 employees in defiance of a court order on unconditional return to work. In a flagrant breach of contractual obligations, the Corporation advertised positions of the striking employees and commenced recruitment for their replacement.
The Corporation and its sister company, Telkom Kenya are not the best students of history. Their two notable victims rose to top positions in the National Labour Centre and the industrial union. The Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU) Secretary General, Francis Atwoli and assistant secretary general Benson Okwaro are living victims of arbitrary actions of the respective communication companies that for years on end dismiss trade union activists and officials.
The disgraced Okwaro is the current general secretary of Communications Workers Union (COWU) whose members are PCK and Telkom Kenya employees and Atwoli worked for the defunct Kenya Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (KPTC) before the split of the Corporation to form separate companies. For nearly a half a century and before that, a worker in Kenya lived in fear and slave like conditions. Employers are laws unto themselves in independent Kenya and rights are things of the past as the colonial labour laws remained in the Statute books long after independence.
Without notice, employers in the yesteryears could wake up one morning and declare contracted labour redundant and sometimes dismiss others for participating in strikes to press for better terms and wages. Consequently, workers are scared of joining unions of choice or participating in union activities. Ironically, these inhumane treatment of the helpless workers get the endorsements of the government.
At the behest of the of the employer, labour movement leaders were harassed and their organizations banned in desperate attempts to silence agitation for better terms. One such union that bore the brunt of government frustration was the Union of Kenya Civil Servants (UKCS). The former President Daniel arap Moi banned the union for 20 years and even after the lifting of the ban, membership was restricted to a certain cadre of employees.
In the aftermath of the confusion, the union also lost a multi-million shilling office complex in dubious deals. It is not in doubt that the Kenyan employer needs first and foremost education on the Bill of Rights and specifically the rights of workers and above all, rehabilitation before he or she can get out of dictatorial mindset.
The writer is a freelance journalist.
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