By
Joe Khamisi
Less than two years from now, the Governing Council of the Kenya Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU), will vote to choose new leaders of the country’s premier labour movement.
By then, the fast talking, pompous, Francis Atwoli, would have clocked a total of 14 years as Secretary General of the organisation – four years more than Uhuru Kenyatta or any other future leader will ever hope to stay in leadership unless there is a change of the Constitution..
The Secretary General’s job in COTU is a powerful and influential one. It is also cushy with a fat salary and myriad perks dribbling from all directions. For example, Atwoli has sat or is sitting on the Boards of the National Social Security Fund, the National Hospital Insurance Fund and the National Bank of Kenya; is Vice President of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions; President of the African Trade Union Unity; and the Secretary General of his parent union, the Kenya Plantation and Agricultural Workers Union, among others not in the public domain. He earned these positions courtesy of COTU.
But while Atwoli lives like a king, millions of his members live in a circle of hands-to-mouth existence. They cannot access decent housing, do not enjoy health insurance and live in slums. They are forced to work under deplorable and humiliating conditions in factories and farms because they have no alternative. Many work in dangerous situations without protective gear including face masks, gloves and boots. As a result many are injured on the job and find, to their surprise, that they cannot be compensated because of bureaucratic failures and general ineptitude of leaders. Where is COTU, you may want to ask.
Labour organisations throughout the world are formed to meet specific goals, among them representing the interests of their members; collective bargaining and defending workers’ rights. That is what people like Fred Kubai, Aggrey Minya, Tom Mboya and others set out to do when they defied colonial odds to form labour unions in Kenya in the 1940s and 1950s.
However there are many times when I feel COTU is failing its members. The so called minimum wage that COTU shouts about every Labour Day is, to say the least, dehumanizing. No one in Kenya today can survive on a salary of 5,000 Kenya shillings per month.
Thus, COTU’s defence of workers’ rights is lacklustre. Many times when workers cry out for help the labour movement is often fast asleep. The leadership is more interested in wearing designer uniforms, singing off-tune dirges, flaunting gold chains and expensive watches, blustering endlessly about non-issues, and all the time pretending to be representing workers. I would not be surprised if some of them in fact sleep with the enemy to undermine the same workers they are paid to defend.
So, my question is: Are labour unions in Kenya of any benefit to workers?
Not if you look at the misery of salt workers in Magarini; observe the exploitation of tea pickers in Kericho; and see the inhuman working conditions of cane labourers in Kakamega. Fifty years have passed since independence, yet workers are still subjected to degrading colonial-like treatment by employers more interested in huge profits than in the welfare of their staff. And the labour movement is saying nothing.
With a whole decade at the helm of COTU and very little to show for it, Atwoli must now give way to fresh blood who can give new impetus to the movement.
Whoever it is, he or she must be a person who is adequately educated on labour matters, is not tainted by baggage of corruption, cannot be manipulated by big business, and is fully committed to the welfare of workers..
Even with a microscope, I am sorry to say, I can not see that person in the current labour leadership.
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