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Collective Action in Kenya
Kenya's First Industrial Strike (1939) and its influence
The first real serious industrial strike in Kenya was in Mombasa in 1939, organized by African Railway apprentices, which turned violent and spread upcountry. The colonial government blamed the strike on the collaboration between Makhan Singh and African leaders such as Kubai, Kaggia, Jesse Kariuki, Joseph Kangethe and Jomo Kenyatta. Singh became a marked man and by 1951 he was arrested, tried for subversion, and restricted to Lokitaung in the northern part of today’s Pokot County. Judge Ransley Thackery described Singh as “a man of malignant influence and ill-will”.
Singh ended up being Kenya’s longest detainee, being freed only in 1961. That was after Kenyatta and the other freedom fighters, Kaggia, Kubai, Achieng Oneko, Paul Ngei and Kungu Karumba (who had all been detained in 1953) were released. Interestingly, it was Justice Thackery who tried the six at the infamous Kapenguria case, convicted them of organizing and managing the Mau Mau rebellion and sent them to detention in 1953.
By 1952, a number of other African trade unions were set up. Aggrey Minya got some of them to form the Kenya Federation of Registered Trade Unions with himself as secretary general. But with the declaration of a state of emergency in Kenya by the colonial government in October 1952, the KFRTU did not make much of an impression on the labour front. Many trade union leaders were detained allegedly because they were associated with the Mau Mau, Kubai and Kaggia being among them.
Kenya's first Nationwide Strike (1993)
In April 1993, Mugalla called for a 100% wage increase and the sacking of the Minister for Finance, George Saitoti, whom the workers blamed for the country’s economic woes. More than 20 unions attended a meeting of secretaries-general and shop stewards at the COTU headquarters in Solidarity House, Nairobi, and backed Mugalla’s call for a nationwide strike if their demands were not met.
COTU’s call for a nationwide strike was partly to protest the government’s implementation of the structural adjustment programme that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were imposing on third world countries as a condition for continued aid. COTU wanted a general wage increase to offset the impact the structural adjustment programme was having on employment and purchasing power in the country.
The government declared the intended strike unlawful and President Moi skipped May Day celebrations that year, the first time since independence that a president had not joined workers on this important day. He was represented by his Minister for Labour, Phillip Masinde, who was forced to walk out of the meeting when he was booed by workers for announcing a 17% pay increase instead of the 100% that COTU had demanded. The strike COTU had called went on for two days; as a result, financial transactions were hampered in many urban areas and people could not go to work due to lack of public transportation services.