80,000 tea workers strike over prunning technology

NAIROBI, Tuesday

About 80,000 workers in Kenya's tea farms went on strike over the use of tea plucking machines, which they said could cost them their jobs, the country’s top union official said.

The union said the strike disrupted tea plucking at companies in the Rift Valley region. Tea earns Kenya its second-largest amount of foreign exchange after horticulture.

Tea producers in the affected area said the workers were not protesting against the use of the machines per se, but wanted a new agreement to specify the portion of tea that would be plucked by the machines, and how much would be picked by workers.

Remove machines

"We need to sit down with employers and do away with the machines, as they will make our members to lose their jobs," said Francis Atwoli, the secretary general of the Central Organisation of Trade Unions. It was not immediately clear exactly how much production had been affected by the strike. At Nandi Tea Estate, a small-sized tea producer, there was a slow turnout by workers in the morning.

"Tea production was not badly affected," Sigot Esbai, a senior manager at the farm, said.

He said tea producers had secured a court injunction to stop the industrial action, until both parties sit down to hammer out a new deal on the use of the plucking machines.

When the machines were introduced in 2005, the two sides struck a deal to review the agreement every two years and the previous deal had lapsed.

"The machines are cheaper to run and pluck more leaves than humans," Esbai said.

—Reuters