Solidarity Center Tour Spotlights Work to Stop AIDS in Africa

Ellie Larson, executive director of the Solidarity Center, visited Kenya July 23-28, along with Dianne Tamuk, president of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) Council 5 and Shawn Fivecoat, president of AFA-CWA Council 93. For six days they examined the impact of Solidarity Center HIV/AIDS programs on transport workers. In these excerpts from their journal, they describe how East African trade union members are working to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and gain a decent life for themselves and their families. To read the entire journal, click here. 

Day One:  We traveled across Nairobi to meet with the officers of the Central Organization of Trade Unions-Kenya (COTU), Kenya’s version of the AFL-CIO. COTU includes unions from sectors such as transportation, textiles and agriculture.  Over the past decades, the Solidarity Center and COTU have had a close relationship. Several elected leaders of COTU have attended the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md.

In addition, the COTU leaders thanked us for the Solidarity Center’s technical assistance in organizing 60,000 workers in Kenyan Export Processing Zones. The Soildarity Center also has assisted with programs to eliminate child labor and human trafficking, and with HIV/AIDS awareness programs for workers.  

It was particularly enlightening to learn how important the issues of globalization, outsourcing and the “casualization of the workforce” (the replacement of permanent workers with part-time and contract/short-term workers) are for our African brothers and sisters.  

Later in the day we met with the COTU gender officers. These impressive women shared with us their commitment to the struggle for gender equality in Kenya and all of East Africa. They are also dedicated to HIV/AIDS education, prevention and treatment in a country where nearly 40 percent of workers are infected. Over afternoon tea, we discussed the cultural morés in which polygamy, rape, sexual abuse and female oppression are commonplace.  

Our first day concluded with a meeting with the highest elected officers of the Kenya Union of Civil Servants, which is rebuilding after being arbitrarily banned by the government from 1980 through 2001. We learned that private-sector workers with the same skills make twice the wage of those laboring for the government.  

Day Two: The day began with an hour-long flight and a two-and-a-half-hour drive through the beautiful and arid Kenyan countryside to the town of Malaba, a border crossing between Kenya and Uganda. There we toured one of the Solidarity Center’s SafeTStop facilities. SafeTStops are community and union meeting places for long-distance truck drivers. They were created through a collaboration of seven partners supporting community-based outreach. The program’s goal is reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS in East African border communities.

The Malaba SafeTStop conducts up to 70 HIV/AIDS tests each week, providing education, counseling and referrals for treatment. A staggering 30 percent of those screened test positive. Collaboration between the SafeTStop and the Kenya Long Distance Truck Drivers Union provides a safe place for workers to gather and learn the importance of prevention in fighting this devastating pandemic. 

After a short walk across the border, we toured the sister SafeTStop facility on the Uganda side of Malaba. There, Solidarity Center field workers arranged for us to meet with a group of low-income women. Because of the region’s extreme poverty, women often migrate to these border towns to support their families through the commercial sex trade. They openly shared with us the heartbreaking reality of their lives. We promised to pass on their stories to those in the United States with the resources to provide badly needed assistance.

 Day Three: We met with leaders of the transport, railway and aviation unions. We discussed issues familiar to our own transportation workers such as layoffs, outsourcing and casual/part-time work. When Kenya gained independence from British colonial rule in the early 1960s, railroads were the primary source for transporting goods.  Since then, the Kenyan government has neglected to invest in infrastructure and the railroads have declined severely.  Like other international trade unions, Kenya’s railway workers are discussing a merger that would form a giant union encompassing port workers, seafarers, railway and ferry service workers.  This much larger union should amplify the voice of transportation workers in their fight for better working conditions and job security.

Day Four: We traveled to the dusty community of Mariakani (near the seaport of Mombasa), which has developed around a trucking weigh station.  The Solidarity Center and its partners have placed a SafeTStop Center at this strategic location.  We toured the facility and were briefed by the local staff on the continued need for this and other HIV/AIDS testing sites.  On the way back to Mombasa, we stopped in on a gathering of low-income women who work as community peer educators with the Solidarity Center and our partners to educate their village neighbors on the spread of HIV/AIDS. Back in Mombasa, we meet with the executive officers of the Dockworkers Union (DWU), Kenya Shipping Clearing and Warehouse Workers Union (KSCWWO) and the Seafarers Union.  The Mombasa Dockworkers Union is notable for proactively adopting a working policy to implement HIV/AIDS and gender empowerment activities. 

Day Five: The fifth day of our tour started with a visit to a paralegal conference co-sponsored by the Solidarity Center and COTU.  We joined 25 elected union officers from numerous sectors including music and entertainment, teachers, hospitality, plantation and agriculture workers, bakers and confectionary workers as well as members of organizations we had met with during the week. The seminar is a three-week paralegal training program to teach trade unionists to represent workers in employer disputes in Industrial Court.  Unlike the United States, union/worker grievances in Kenya are heard by a tribunal consisting of one advocate each from labor and management and an impartial judge.

Later in the day, we meet with high-ranking members of the International Trade Union Confederation African Regional Organization (ITUC-AFRO) and discussed the benefits of collaboration among trade unions around the globe. Our next meeting was held at the offices of Joseph Katende, African regional secretary of the International Transport Federation. Katende confirmed the dire need for a continuing comprehensive education program for leadership development throughout Africa. We discussed the importance of rebuilding COTU’s existing labor college in Kisumu to develop young union leaders throughout the region.  In Katende’s words, “One who wants to develop Africa develops unions.” 

Day Six: On our final day, we visited Ben Fineberg, a University of California, Berkley intern for the Solidarity Center.  Fineberg is a member of the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) and is exploring the impact of industrial free trade zones on workers in developing countries.  This program was initiated by a grassroots movement to monitor and improve workplace conditions for exploited workers around the world.  On the drive to the Athi River Export Processing Zone (EPZ), Fineberg explained the exploitation of workers in developing countries, including many who are victims of human trafficking.

We toured the single remaining unionized factory in this EPZ, a facility that manufactures American university apparel through contracts supported by USAS.  These students hope to expand the program to larger western markets.  However, in pursuit of lower paid workers, manufacturers have moved their operations to competing EPZ locations in China, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.   

At the conclusion of our six-day agenda, we were impressed with the great number of committed union activists we met in East Africa.  However, there remains much to be done for workers, and particularly women, in this region.   

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