The Alternative Systems-Trade Union Movement and its Role in Society
Patrick O. Ochieng
Popular participation in public life, economic development and social advancement are some of the desires which independence provoked in Kenya. This saw the expansion of popular sectors of civil society such as the Trade Union movement. This expansion however did not last for long. The growth of the Trade Union movement slowed down from 1965 when the state imposed its regulatory controls over the movement.
The actual number of trade unions declined from 52 in 1963 to 33 in 1995 due to amalgamation, dissolution and deregistration. The actual death of the labour movement came with the changes in their organisational capacities. This brought with it bureaucratisation, a widened scope for corruption and the practice of patronage and clientelism. What has followed are politics that to say the least are fluid and uncertain. What we hear then are factional struggles, formation of splinter groups, palace coups and collaboration with state and employers.
So our labour movement is today rotting in corruption and mismanagement and sinking in incompetence due to lack of commitment and vision by its leaders. The unionisable worker is therefore trapped between an employer who is as exploitative as the trade union. But what do unions do, one may ask?
First Unions concern themselves with bread and butter issues, bargain over wages with employers. Collectively Unions provide workers as group with a means of communicating with management on working conditions, non-wage benefits, employment and even unemployment. Secondly unions also concern themselves with the monetary regime, production function, market situation, labour force and economic shocks. This is the main reason why in alternative politics trade unions are considered as an alternative source of power.
In the absence of Unionism, workers have limited responses to orders they feel are unfair. They can quit, or engage in quiet sabotage or shirking, neither of which is likely to alter the employers’ actions. And the position of non-violence is clear on this, passivity will take us nowhere near liberation.
In the alternative setting, unions constitute a source of worker power, they dilute managerial authority and they offer workers protection through both the ‘industrial jurisprudence’ system, under which workplace decisions are based on rules instead of supervisory judgement or whim and the grievance and arbitration system under which disputes are resolved amicably. Unions therefore check and curtail management power within enterprises, so that workers rights can be better enforced. The Unions impact on vague paternalistic, authoritarian policies goes beyond the confines of the enterprise.
And therefore the texture of industrial Relations in Kenya as in other parts of the world is based on a tripartite relationship between government, employers and unions. The state and capital in Kenya has opposed the trade unions and this has led to the gradual integration of the movement into the corporatist apparatuses of the state, leading to a politically deradicalised and acquiescent movement. COTU frankly speaking has been shaped as a parastatal and functions as a department in the office of the President. One even remembers the attempts to affiliate it to the ruling party KANU.
Thus as Oketch Owiti, says, we have ‘trade union units’ not a labour movement. That is why when the teachers are on strike, bankers do not bother to support them neither do they seek the latter’s support. When NSSF is looted COTU who sits on its board do not as much as raise a finger although they have veto powers on that Board. ‘Unless Unions develop new activities and strategies, and attract new members, as we told them in a recent seminar on ANV targeting their sector, they will remain entangled in their cocoons’. They need to come out in support of the emerging democratic culture, because their political prominence is indisputable.
If the objective of economic and social development is the raising of living standards, the human resource that plays a vital role in its achievement must be given greater recognition. The labour force of any nation constitutes a significant segment of its society. Workers and their organisations must therefore be concerned with the national interest first.
‘We have to rebuild our country and get it out of the present economic mire. We have to involve both the workers and trade unions in this change by actively involving them in the constitution making process with a review to having far reaching structural changes in our decayed socio-economic, political and legal structures as these impinge not only on labour but as they affect the country as a whole’, observes Christopher Mulei.
There is however the right to hope, isn’t there? As Susan George observes and I agree with her; ‘If hope is not, as I believe it is not, a right; if it is not a duty either, then what is it? I can only define it as a way of living honourably and with dignity to improve the human condition in the historical circumstances of one’s own time, however hard those circumstances. This is what our ancestors did... why stop now?’ There is room for hope for our unions despite the predatory political system and the eroding economic base.
In Kenya today union busting does not have a moral leg to stand on, it has been possible only because the balance between unions and employers has tilted, under the two neo- liberal governments, too far to the employers’ way. If trade unions are to be helped to enlarge their role in society by legislation, society is entitled to something in return.
Responsibility in the conduct of industrial relations and answerability not just to their members but to the common good is important. Unions must not engage in fractured actions and they must support other sectors of civil society in the reform process for example. The policy environment (Industrial Relations Charter) must balance the conflicting interests between union members, non-members, employers and the public and must also draw a line between what is public and private interest in labour matters.
The institution of compulsory arbitration must be abolished. In strict legal theory, freedom of association for workers carries with it an automatic right to strike in pursuit of workers interests. If there is no direct threat of strike as a sanction to sustain collective bargaining, the exercise is meaningless.
Finally it is clear that the trade union movement is the only structure that is able to engage in civil disobedience as a matter of right. These structures also transcend tribal boundaries. This makes them very unique points of alternative politics
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