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International Trade Union History and Memory Network
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Kenya

Like all nations, Kenya has been founded on the efforts of many people, institutions, organizations, corporations and professions. Fifty years after gaining its independence, Kenya now has approximately two million workers in the formal sector, with more than 75 per cent belonging to trade unions.

Functions of Trade Unions in Kenya

In order to fulfill the main objective of securing decent terms and conditions of employment, trade unions engage in activities and programs to promote and ensure adequate wages, secure better conditions of employment, reduce hours of work, get better and respectable treatment from employers, protect members, and secure some control of the industry/institutions.

To achieve these functions, trade unions adopt the methods of collective bargaining negotiations, strikes or boycotts, diplomacy and legal proceedings. It is only a trade union that has these mandates within the provision of the law.

Trade unions have the responsibility of helping and supporting members during sickness, accidents, natural calamities, unemployment, and victimization during strikes and lockouts. To support their members, trade unions also run schools for the children of the workers, as well as provide library facilities and indoor/outdoor sporting facilities to their members. 

Trade unions select their leaders to represent workers' interests on the Boards of Directors and participate in general elections in order to have their members elected. They aim to champion the interests of their members to parliament and in senates, so as to achieve a socialist state by influencing policy and law formulations.

Colonialism and Trade Unions

Kenya’s trade union movement evolved through difficult situations created by the British colonial government, which persistently defended employers in order to prevent the rise of an organized labour movement. But towards the end of the 1930s, there was a slight change in policy.

The colonial government allowed the creation of unions, but in a very restricted and limited way as far their rights and operations were concerned. The opportunity was seized by pioneers like Fred Kubai, Makhan Singh and Bildad Kaggia to start trade unions. In 1935, Makhan Singh and many other Asian workers set up the Indian Trade Union, which he soon broadened to embrace all races and trades. The union eventually became the Labour Trade Union of Kenya.

By the late 1940s, Kubai had set up the Transport and Allied Workers Union (TAWU) and Kaggia had established the Clerks and Commercial Workers Union. By 1950, the active collaboration between Kubai and Singh led to the creation of the East African Trade Union Congress, with Singh as secretary-general and Kubai as President. The two committed their congress to political objectives and with Singh’s self-avowed communism, the stage was set for confrontation with the colonial government.

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