Union leaders should strike balance between demands and public expectations

Dr Samuel Oroko (centre), the national chairman of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union, with its national secretary-general Dr Ouma Oluga (left) and Nairobi branch secretary Dr Thuranira Kaugiria at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi on December 8, 2016. PHOTO | FRANCIS NDERITU | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Unions call strikes because their members do not want to lose their jobs in the first place but to make their conditions better. However, the way Kenyan unions have been going about their strikes sometimes creates the impression that jobs are secondary to the grievances.

  • It is also significant that majority of the strikes are called within 12 months of an election.

  • As such, the election cycle in Kenya often corresponds with the strikes cycle – again creating the impression that unions are keen to leverage their political muscle to extract concessions from those seeking to capture or retain State power.

  • The danger with this is that there is the risk of sacrificing genuine economic and welfare grievances at the altar of politics.

One day many years ago, when I was a unionised journalist, my employer delayed staff salaries for a considerable time.

I approached our union’s secretary-general with the proposal that he calls a strike to demand the release of our money. He looked me in the eye and, with a smile, said: “If you go on strike, that will be your last salary”.

His words made me question the wisdom of being a union member and, from that day onwards, I decided to be my own father of the chapel. Among journalists, a father of a chapel is the equivalent of a shop steward. He is the worker who confronts management whenever his unionised colleagues have a grievance against their employer.

Over the years, I have had the privilege of travelling to European countries and, during some of those visits, I found workers in various sectors on strike, demanding better working conditions. At one time it was airlines and airport staff. At another it was train and bus drivers.

The most memorable, however, was when I found police in one city had, in the language of newspapers “downed their tools”.

One thing I noted was that none of these workers went on strike for days on end. Usually, they would give notice of the intended strike. However, they would not stay away from work the entire day or month as happens here with teachers, council workers, transport workers and now, doctors and lecturers. As a rule, the hours when they strike are defined.

DAYS BEFORE

In London, for instance, the drivers warn the public that they will not be available days before the strike. And they make it clear what time the strike will start and when it will end. On no day did they strike during the peak hours.

I found this odd because, when matatu drivers and conductors in Kenya go on strike, they stay away from work for three or four days. By the fourth day, they are so broke that they do not need prompting to call off their strike. As always happens, they also lose the goodwill of commuters because people have to find their way to work whether there is a matatu strike or not.

When salaried workers in Kenya go on strike for days on end, their union officials find themselves eventually negotiating for extraneous considerations, away from the key issues that drove them to strike in the first place.

One of those conditions is that no one will be denied a salary for the time they were on strike. The other, invariably, is that no one will be sacked for absconding duty, regardless of whether the strike lasted a month or three.

The demand for honouring collective bargaining agreements and addressing other grievances come a distant third!

POSE CHALLENGES

Yet this need not be the case. Whereas the philosophy behind a union’s decision to call a strike is almost always sound, sometimes the strategy can pose challenges, especially when courts get involved in resolving the disputes. To guard against such pitfalls and ensure that those on strike do not lose public support, it is important to strike a balance between the workers’ demands and public expectations.

As a human being, if I have a sick relative and I find doctors and nurses on strike, my first sympathy will not be to their cause, especially if there is no hope in sight that their demands will be met so that they can return to work sooner. I will first think about the person dying in my arms because he cannot get help.

Similarly, if there is a matatu strike and my boss is calling me, I will worry more about what to tell him than the grievances that the matatu workers have.

To balance between the two competing interests, union leaders must find a formula that will help them to navigate their talks with employers while also ensuring that their industry does not grind to a halt. A grievance is a short- or medium-term need but a job and the livelihood one derives from it is long-term. Unions ought to appreciate this duality so that they can, as we say, walk and chew gum at the same time.

BETTER CONDITIONS

Unions call strikes because their members do not want to lose their jobs in the first place but to make their conditions better. However, the way Kenyan unions have been going about their strikes sometimes creates the impression that jobs are secondary to the grievances.

It is also significant that majority of the strikes are called within 12 months of an election. As such, the election cycle in Kenya often corresponds with the strikes cycle – again creating the impression that unions are keen to leverage their political muscle to extract concessions from those seeking to capture or retain State power.

The danger with this is that there is the risk of sacrificing genuine economic and welfare grievances at the altar of politics. 

Ng'ang'a Mbugua is deputy managing editor, Daily Nation; [email protected]