Teachers, lecturers have intermittently stayed out of work

Casual workers load fertilizer onto farmer's vehicles at the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) depot in Eldoret ahead of the planting season. Farmers however complained of being forced to take NPK although they had purchased DAP. 28-02-2017. PHOTOS BY: KEVIN TUNOI

In the last five years, teachers and lecturers have intermittently stayed out of class and lecture halls. Doctors have pulled out of their white gowns, walked out of operating theaters leaving patients crying out in pain. 

And nurses, well, they have just decided to go back to hospital wards after staying put in the streets for five months. And yet all this, the flow of money into their respective accounts has not stopped.

They have all demanded better pay for harder times. The cost of living has painfully gone up. And the Government has, often times, and acceded to their demands, offering them a pay-rise, to the chagrin of taxpayers who have to shoulder the burden of a ballooning wage bill.

But, inflation, or the general rise in prices of goods and services, has not been as cruel to these pensionable, unionised and health-insured civil servants as it has been to Bernard Ochieng’, who makes a living by porting for a local bakery.

Mr Ochieng’ is among hundreds of thousands of casual labourers that uncaring employers, reluctant to invest in the latest machinery, have literally turned them into their forklifts.

And their treatment has not been any better than that of a machine. They have been paid just enough to get them going, but not enough to help them lead a decent life.  

And, unlike nurses or doctors or teachers, no one has stood up to Ochieng’s employer and reminded him that the employee too needs to be saved from an abrasive cost of living.

The result is that Ochieng’ who robotically carries crates of bread from the inside of the bakery to a waiting truck, from dawn to dusk, has been helplessly decimated by inflation. 

In 2013, for example, he was paid Sh3 for every crate he carried. His employer, on the other hand, sold each loaf of bread at Sh27. 

And while the employer has since increased this price to Sh35 in line with rising cost of production, he still pays Ochieng’ Sh3 for every crate that he carries.

Yet, since October 2013, Consumer Price Index (CPI) or the weighted average of a basket of goods and services consumed by most households, particularly food, clothing, housing, water, electricity, health, transport, and communication- has risen by 27.8 per cent from 142.75 in October 2013 to 182.50 in October 2017.

However, Ochieng’s nominal income (or the money he receives from his employer for his work) has not changed, five years later.   

This means that the goods and services that Ochieng’s income can buy has been cut by almost a third. And Ochieng has no recourse, no one to help him.

If he takes to the streets, his family might as well sleep hungry and spend the night somewhere out in the cold.

“Those others,” says Ochieng’ of the permanently employed, “are always taken care of by Francis Atwoli.” Atwoli is the Secretary General for Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU), the largest trade organisation the country.  

The only way out for him to beat inflation is to put in more hours, carry even more crates, a daunting undertaking that has pushed his health to the limit. In Ochieng’s world, there is no such thing as a burn-out.

Dr Scholastica Odhiambo, an Economics lecturer from Maseno University, unlike workers in the formal sector who are assured of a certain pay rise every year to cushion them against inflation, for casual workers like Ochieng’ it is all about brute force. She says that casuals might benchmark their pay on the minimum wage.

Unfortunately, most employers have found them dispensable and so have not even followed the dictates of the minimum wage. “So, it is just the discretion of the employer to pay over and above the minimum wage,” says Dr Odhiambo.

We found Mukabash outside a drinking den in Makongeni Estate, Nairobi. He said he is a member of ‘mawaya,’ a special group of workers in the Industrial Area who patiently wait for a container to arrive with supplies so that they can offload them. Today, no container arrived.

SAD REALITY.

Mukabash waited till 6pm, and decided to return home empty-handed. He has a wife and three children. A pint of the illicit brew would certainly help him fight off this sad reality. “Yesterday, it was slightly better, but not everyone got to do the work. There were only two containers,” he told me.

To offload one container, they are paid Sh3,000, though there are a few ‘generous’ employers who can give as much as Sh5,000 for such a container.  

“Kuna mahali pengine wamemea tu na thao tano kwa 40 feet” (There are places where they are stuck with Sh5, 000 for a 40-feet container). Ten people work on a single container, says Mukabash.

On good days, when there is a lot of work, Mukabash finishes work at around 8pm, having left his house at 8am. He remembers one such good day. Few people came on that day, and he remembers leaving work at 8pm. He made Sh4,500. The most he has ever received for a day’s work.   

“Tushawai goma mara mob. Lakini unajua mahustler nao ni wengi,wana njaa,” (We have gone on strike several times. But you know hustlers are many, and they are hungry,” says Mukabash, noting that one such strike did not end well.

On that day, they demanded an increment, in line with what other unionised employees had received. “So, we told our employer that we had worked for this same pay for so long, the cost of living had gone up,” he explained to Weekend Business.

“We told him: ‘This Sh300 per container is hurting us. Because by the time you get Sh1,200 you must have worked on four 20-feet containers, and that is not easy per day,” he says noting that the work is labour-intensive.

“Watu walikuja kuchukuliwa Addis Ababa Road wakaenda wakaichapa na hio tu doo,” (People were picked from Addis Ababa Road, and they went and did the work, for the same pay” remembers Mukabash.

Today, he says, they take whatever they are given without complaining.

“They are highly dispensable, and so the employer will keep paying them low,” says Dr Odhiambo, noting that this unlike a pensionable employer who can sue their employer for breach of contract.

Life, has in the last five years generally been harsh for unskilled workers like Ochieng’ and Mukabash. While wages for unskilled employees have risen by 27.7 per cent since 2012, CPI has gone up by 28 per cent in the same period, according to The Economist Survey 2017.

This means their real income has been reduced marginally thus affecting their purchasing power.

On the other end, total wage employment for people in the formal sector grew by 22.6 per cent between 2011 and 2016. “Private sector wage employment increased by 26.1 per cent compared to the public sector which grew by 14.6 per cent,” according to the Economic Survey 2017,  a fact that might have helped them fight off the debilitating effects of inflation, especially given that they don’t pay for such things as healthcare.

Hezron Nyantike, a security guard for one the private security firms in the country, says earnings from his banana plantation in his rural home in Nyamira County have been his greatest saviour.

Joining a trade union, and being absorbed as a permanent employee in 2015, has also helped him a lot, says Nyantike.

Generally, a net monthly pay of Sh13,000 (though this is less a loan deduction of about Sh5,000) that he receives for his services can barely sustain him alone, leave alone his wife and three children in his rural home.

His monthly expenditure includes a monthly rent of Sh3,000 for a ten-by-ten room, Sh200 for electricity, airtime of Sh3,000, Sh6,000 on food.

He goes to work six days a week, spending Sh2,600 on transport. Every month he sends Sh4,500 to his family in his rural home and pays Sh17,500 a year for his children’s school fees.

“The cost of living has really gone up,” says Nyantike. “The work that my wife is doing at home is what is actually sustaining me here in the city,” he explains, noting there are times when his wife might decide to return some of the money he sends them.

“Since we joined the union that is when things have changed. Before, even a supervisor could simply tell you to remove the uniform and get lost,” he says.

Dr Julius Muia, the Director General for Vision 2030 Secretariat, says the poor pay to these workers is not helping with their productivity, with most workers demoralised by the poor pay. Kenya has one of the poorest labour productivity, a fact that might affect its goal of attaining a double-digit growth by 2030.

Dr Odhiambo says that although this is like ‘forced labour’ where the workers have no option, dissatisfaction can come in the form of sickness. After all, they are humans, they are not machines.