Effects of economic liberalization on trade unions: a case study of the Kenya plantation and agricultural workers union, 1980-1998.

Abstract

This study endeavored to assess the effects of economic liberalization on trade unionism in Kenya, with the specific reference to the Kenya Plantation and Agricultural Workers‟ Union (KPAWU). It interrogated the effectiveness of the leadership responses to the effects of economic liberalization and revealed that it was unsatisfactory to many workers owing to a number of leadership challenges. The study was based on Karl Marx‟s Labour Theory of Surplus Value which posits that capitalists exploit workers‟ surplus value to accumulate profits. Marx suggests that workers organize themselves into trade unions for self-emancipation by struggling for higher wages. Because the theory confines union activities to pecuniary struggles only, Moral and Ethical Theory of trade unionism was used to supplement Marx‟s theory by engendering other union concerns that are not financial in nature. The study used of both primary and secondary data. The secondary sources were supplemented with oral interviews using unstructured questionnaire as well as the use of archival sources. The purposive and snow ball techniques were used in identifying the informants. The data obtained were qualitatively analyzed. The study established that economic liberalization had calamitous effects on the plantation workers. Under the auspices of economic liberalization, workers were rendered jobless through practices such as deskilling, introduction of machinery and redundancy. Moreover, the government reduced its expenditure on health and education, locking out the plantation workers from obtaining quality health services, and their children deprived of post primary education. The government‟s legislations on minimum wages denied the plantation workers better pay hence impoverished them. Similarly, the currency devaluation skyrocketed inflation rendering the prices of basic commodities unaffordable to plantation workers. The plantation workers, through their union, KPAWU, responded to these ignoble effects of economic liberalization by engaging in industrial action, seeking legal protection through Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA) and retraining workers. Since this study was conducted among the plantation workers in three counties only, further research should be done to include all the plantation workers in order to generalize the findings of this study.