Mr Tom Wekesa has always been a dejected man every May 1 over the past seven years, due to the sad memories the International Labour Day evokes.
Mr Wekesa worked for Eastern Produce Kenya (EPK) — a sister company of multinational agricultural firm Kakuzi Plc — diligently as a tea plucker for 19 years, until he was dismissed in December 2016 alongside over 2,000 other workers. Their dismissal followed a strike they participated in to push the employer to fulfil a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).
He was also a workers’ representative at Kapsumbeiwa Tea Estate, one of EPK’s tea plantations in Nandi Hills, Nandi County.
But the December 2016 dismissal would turn out to be the start of his problems as he, together with his colleagues, were chased away in a manner he describes as inhumane, and were never paid their terminal benefits.
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“Our property was lost as the company used police to eject us from its premises where we lived. We lost our properties, including household items and others that people had bought to develop themselves at their rural homes. The company destroyed the properties.
“We were never paid a single cent of our terminal benefits which all permanent employees who had worked beyond 10 years were entitled to. The company robbed me of my Sh220,000,” says Mr Wekesa, who now survives without a stable job.
He says hundreds of workers sacked at the time have been stuck at shopping centres adjacent to EPK’s tea plantations in Nandi Hills, unable to travel back to their rural homes following the massive dismissal.
His story replicates the life the over 2,000 former workers of EPK Ltd have led over the past seven years and a cry for justice that no one seems to hear.
“I was left without work and have never secured any despite responsibilities to look after my family. I’ve been turned into a beggar whenever my children want school fees and other needs; the most difficult point to find yourself in as a man,” he says.
The cry by the hundreds of Kenyans, albeit just in prayer due to their inability to afford expensive legal services, is shedding the light on tribulations workers in the country continue to face.
EPK Ltd, which employs over 7,000 workers and which the workers heavily blame for the problems they undergo today, has no regrets and continues to insist that it owes nobody anything, despite having a policy that workers who have served it for at least 10 years — employed on permanent terms — are entitled to terminal benefits when they exit.
Through a public relations agency, the company last week told the Nation that it dismissed the workers after participating in an unlawful strike and destroying property.
“The employees’ action was despite the Employment and Labour Relations Court order that such action would be an unprotected strike, and a breach of these orders could carry a penal penalty,” the company’s legal manager Denis Gitaka said.
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Workers who have spoken to the Nation accuse the company of having failed to ensure a safe environment for them to work peacefully during the December 2016 incident, as many were chased away from tea plantations by goons who masqueraded as protesters and that the firm engaged them in a hurried disciplinary process before ejecting them from its premises.
“In respect of the disciplinary process, due process in accordance with the Employment Act was followed, including requesting employees to attend disciplinary hearings and issuance of show-cause letters about why their employment contracts should not be terminated,” the company rebuts.
“Employees dismissed through this process were paid all their terminal dues owed to them, again as prescribed by Kenyan labour laws and their contracts.”
After the massive dismissal, the workers through their union, Kenya Plantation and Agricultural Workers Union (KPAWU), went to court seeking orders to bar the employer from the action.
But an interesting turn of events would see the employer seek a recusal of the judge who handled the case, Justice David Njagi Marete, a move the judicial officer strongly castigated as an attempt by the company to silence the court.
“This is an interesting scenario. It would appear that after a series of matters before court and the outcomes thereof, the respondent/applicants [EPK Ltd] now feel frustrated and are seeking a way out by way out of an application for recusal. The elaborate application of the respondent/applicant seems largely based on their experiences in court on this and other matters. Nasty experiences? I do not know,” Justice Marete, who was at the Employment and Labour Relations Court in Kericho then, said in the May 2017 ruling.
While declining to recuse himself, the judge faulted the company for raising administrative court processes which ought to have been handled by the court registrar as ground on which it was uncomfortable with the judge hearing the matter…
“I suspect that this application is intended to harangue and provoke the court into silence. It is a display of contempt of this court. This is outright vexation. It may as well be intended to annoy. This is also an abuse of the court’s resources and should be discouraged at all times,” Justice Marete ruled as he dismissed the application.
But an interesting turn of events that followed saw the advocate who KPAWU hired to represent workers apply to withdraw the case. “We did not instruct our advocate to withdraw the case regarding the dismissal of our members because our interest as a union that champions for the rights of workers was to have them returned to work and compensated for their losses,” says KPAWU Secretary-General Francis Atwoli.
The union is now seeking help from human rights organisations.
The bone of contention between the workers and the company was a lengthy battle on a push by the workers for the company to raise their salaries as many were unable to meet basic needs, where a court had earlier approved a 30 per cent wage increase, but EPK contested in court.
But the workers believe it was strategy by the employer to eject permanent employees and remain with those employed on contract, a strategy it had pursued for long.
“There was nothing else, they just wanted to get rid of us — the permanent workers,” Mr Wekesa says.
Former Nandi Hills MP Alfred Keter, who lodged a motion in Parliament at the time to have the multinational investigated, told the Nation that it was impossible to battle the multinational, which he describes as enjoying support from powerful forces in government.
“The motion I presented was sabotaged and didn’t move anywhere even though we had planned a tour to Nandi Hills to meet the workers,” he said.
Mr Keter argues that for workers in multinational firms to enjoy their rights as enshrined in the Constitution, Parliament has to enact regulations to guide their operations. BY DAILY NTION