Going for Growth: Prospect's partnership with KETAWU

Going for Growth: Prospect's partnership with KETAWU

'It is creating a change of culture' - Monica Achieng, a KETAWU branch secretary from the Central Rift region

In late November, I had the privilege of travelling to Kenya with colleagues from Prospect. Prospect is developing a partnership with KETAWU, the Kenya Electrical Trades and Allied Workers' Union, which is a union of approximately 9,000 members, most of whom are employed in energy generation or electricity supply and distribution via Kengen or the Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC).

A major part of this TUC-funded project has been the technical support of Prospect to support KETAWU's national and regional leaders to develop an organising plan, in support of KETAWU's strategic objectives. Using a mixture of training and facilitation led by Anne Douglas (Prospect National Secretary, Scotland) and Craig Marshall (Deputy vice-president, Prospect), KETAWU has now completed the design of an organising plan for the coming two-three years which will see them recruit, retain and organise up to 6000 additional electricity, energy and allied workers, with core strategies to upgrade temporary staff to permanent contracts, and organise in new companies. Key organising themes will be climate change, gender and youth.

This was the third visit by Prospect to Kenya and was complemented by a previous visit to the UK during which three KETAWU leaders attended Prospect's annual conference.

According to KETAWU's regional leaders, the impacts of the partnership with Prospect are already being felt. Monica Achieng, a KETAWU branch secretary from the Central Rift region and one of only two women (out of 56) working in KPLC's operations and maintenance department says: 'When we met with Prospect for the training in September, we initially did not know how to reach out to our members but we used the books and the materials provided and found that reaching new members and selling KETAWU is so simple. Members have a know-how now and know what KETAWU can do for them. It has made our work much easier for them.'

'The training this time will be marvellous in that it will help us more with recruitment. We will use the knowledge, we will be able to communicate the things we will do for our members and make sure they are implemented. It is creating a change of culture.'

Rodgers M. Kweyu, a regional branch secretary from Mombasa and national organising secretary for KETAWU says: 'In September, just after Prospect's visit to us and the first training sessions, we as KETAWU called a strike at KPLC over the issue of casual employment and the lack of permanent employment for these workers. We wanted to bring casual workers onto contracts, bring short-term contract workers onto permanent contracts, and support permanent workers with better promotion opportunities, and to renegotiate our CBA which was due.'

'When we threatened the strike, the Ministry of Labour immediately organised a tripartite negotiation and out of that came an MoU between KETAWU and KPLC and so we called off the strike. This MoU agreed to put over 1200 casual workers onto longer-term contracts and also brought some other practical benefits to workers. In total, nearly 4000 casual workers will benefit in the future.'

'With this MoU, we had really showed the power of KETAWU and what it can do for workers. We called all shop stewards in the region to a consultative meeting at the end of September, and we agreed to go out and recruit casual workers. In my area, we managed to recruit over 250 people in less than 2 months, and we have another 117 still to reach. We had demonstrated to them the power of collective bargaining and so they were willing to join us.'

All in all, KETAWU has recruited an incredible 2000 or so new members just in the last couple of months.

Also part of the recent programme in Kenya, was a needs analysis workshop which focussed on longer-term advocacy opportunities for KETAWU to explore in the areas of climate change (which is already affecting Kenya in a major way due to its dependence on hydro-electricity generation) and the expansion of the electricity generation and distribution system to meet the needs of the 80 per cent of Kenyans who do not currently have access to electricity, and who are instead reliant on charcoal and other unsustainable forms of power. It is hoped by KETAWU, Prospect and the TUC that the ideas emerging from this workshop can be used to support the development of the partnership in the future.

Vicky Cann

vcann@tuc.org.uk