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Kenya: Unions Have Lived Up to Their Calling
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The Nation (Nairobi)
10 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Francis Atwoli
Nairobi
We at the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (Cotu) have read with interest Mr Cabral Pinto's article in your newspaper calling for fundamental reforms in Kenya's labour movement.
We take exception to several points and wish to remind him that Cotu is neither an NGO nor a lobby group because both have separate and independent acts of Parliament that govern their roles and operations.
As the umbrella body of Kenyan workers, Cotu has a full-fledged women's department composed of elected leaders - from the grassroots to the national levels, with the mandate to competently articulate issues affecting women.
WE CONSIDER MISPLACED assertions by the writer that the Kenya Women's Workers Organisation (KEWWO) is the only "union" that struggles for women workers' rights.
For starters, KEWWO is not registered as a trade union; it is an amorphous women's movement operating under the banner of civil society. How does anyone expect Cotu to help women in KEWWO outside the country's industrial relations system governed by the five sets of the newly-enacted labour laws?
As a nation, we know that civil society is driven by donor policies because in Kenya, we have over 3,600 registered NGOs and another 400 non-registered ones, with three-quarters of them operating operating as briefcase NGOs attracting a whopping $800 billion annually for real and imagined projects.
This amount is equal to double the Kenya national budget and very few NGOs will account for their share of the donations.
The trade union movement should not be likened to an NGO or a lobby group. It is a pressure group that operates on specific legislation to protect workers' rights. The movement has structures and is democratic as we hold elections every five years. We remain wholly accountable to our members.
Our activities are fully funded by the members. In other words, we are real and relevant, and it is not true as the writer says that the trade unionists have not reformed. We urge him to take time and visit our Tom Mboya Labour College in Kisumu and he will be able to get records on how many trade union leaders we train annually.
Mr Pinto should also visit our offices at Solidarity Building, Nairobi, to see the calibre of professional economists, researchers and skilled industrial relations practitioners we have.
Let the writer know that days of banging tables and running battles in street protests are long gone. We are virtually scientific in our negotiations. For instance, in the past one year alone, the 34 Cotu-affiliated trade unions signed 546 collective bargaining agreements awarding workers between 12 per cent and 46 per cent. This translates to Sh2.8 billion that went into the pockets of our unionisable workers. This is no mean achievement.
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Writing about us is all right, but we advise people interested in doing so to take time and visit Solidarity Building, where they will readily access information on modern labour leadership as opposed to theoretical assertions that only depict ignorance of modern management techniques and the application of industrial relations practices.
KENYA IS HOME TO ONE OF THE three leading African labour centres - the Nigerian Labour Congress, the Central Organisation of Trade Unions and the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Cotu has earned itself both continental and global recognition, and its secretary -general has just been proposed by the trade union centres in the region to be a member of the International Labour Organistion. Besides, he sits on the general council of the International Trade Union Confederation and chairs the East African Trade Union Confederation.
Mr Atwoli is the Cotu secretary-general.
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