In Kenya, Workers in Tea and Flower Industries Find Strength in Solidarity

In this cross-post from Huffington Post, Bernard Pollock, who is taking a leave of absence from the AFL-CIO to travel through Africa, and Danielle Nierenberg report on the struggles of workers on Kenya’s tea and flower plantations to organize a union for a better life.

Lake Naivasha is known as a beautiful place to see wildlife, including thousands of pink flamingos. But just off the main road to the Naivasha National Park are hectares and hectares of greenhouses as far as the eye can see. They’re not growing food inside the greenhouses. Although Kenya, like other parts of Africa, is experiencing food shortages, malnutrition and hunger because of prolonged drought. They are growing flowers. The flower factory we visited—the Sher Karuturi plant—produces up to 1 million roses a day, which are sold at auction in Dubai and Holland and eventually make their way to the European Union and the United States.

For the most part, we’re told, the conditions are better at this farm than some of the other farms. Workers are provided a stipend for housing, there’s a school located on site, and the salaries are higher than what employees of other farms make (on average $6,200 Kenyan Shillings or about $83 per month compared with $5,000 shillings or about $67).

“The reason why conditions are better off is because of our union,” said Ferdinand Jumo, a shop steward and mechanic at the plant. The Kenya Plantation and Agricultural Workers Union (KPAWU) is currently in contract negotiations to bargain higher wages, keep school costs down and improve safety equipment. The AFL-CIO Solidarity Center is working on helping them grow through ranks, which have been thinned because of heavy intimidation and pressure campaigns by management to prevent workers from forming unions. In fact, 10 additional flower factories abide by the collective bargaining agreement just to keep workers from organizing.

But the union, with help from the Solidarity Center continues to make changes. Says union flower picker Samson Ouuda:

One of the most important things we’ve done is fight against gender discrimination. We’ve fought differences in wages, and won new policies to stop sexual harassment.

An important win since many of the people working in the flower industry are young women.

We also spent two days meeting with tea workers and their union in Kericho and Naidu, Kenya. They work for multinational tea manufacturers Unilever and Finlays. As we drove through the tea region, it was like a never-ending labyrinth, a giant green maze of plants.

When we got to the union office in Kericho, Kenya, union officials were elated to see the staff of the Solidarity Center. Over the past couple months, more than 6,000 tea workers joined KPAWU. To help them win more members—and continue to grow—the Solidarity Center provides resources to hire organizers, conduct trainings and offer communications and transportation support, according to KPAWU branch secretary Joshua Owuor Maywen.

Despite representing more than 200,000 members in the agriculture sector and representing some of the most vulnerable workers, union membership in the industry has declined over the past two decades. During this time, companies have tried whatever they can to cut costs, including implementing child labor, mechanizing the plucking industry. According to one of the workers:

The machines pluck everything, including snakes and spiders, while the tea pluckers pluck tea—hiring casuals or “temporary” workers at lower wages and reduced benefits.

New plants and factories popping up outside of the main tea areas provide stiff competition for the Kenyan tea market by undercutting costs using child labor and low wages. The union is actively fighting against child labor. It’s playing a role in implementing international labor standards required under the Fair Trade rules, including monitoring union plants.

Stay tuned for more stories of workers’ struggles as we visit Solidarity Centers all over Africa.

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