THE debate over the nature of trade unionism has raged since the first unions came into existence.

During my recent visit to Nairobi, the capital of the east African nation of Kenya, I witnessed two contrasting approaches to trade union membership and organising.

Around 90 per cent of the workforce of Kenya works in the informal economy. The other roughly 10 per cent of workers are mainly in public services and hotels but a large proportion also works in the garment industry.

The informal sector contributes around 40 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and are mainly young and women and aged between 18-35.

The government, led by President William Ruto, announced in November that it intends to privatise large swathes of the public sector.

Ruto claims to have identified 35 state bodies that, in his words, are “trapped in government bureaucracy.”

The president, despite all the evidence to the contrary across the world, says the move will boost productivity.

Kenya, according to the country’s Treasury, also has a debt of more than $66 billion, which seriously curbs the ability of the government to find the cash to deliver much needed housing to the 20,000-plus people who live on the streets and the social services Kenyans desperately need.

In 2022, 18 per cent of the country where humans first emerged from the Rift Valley barely survived on just $1.90 (£1.50) per day.

This means that more than 8.9 million of the country’s roughly 51 million population live in extreme poverty.

Over 7.8 million Kenyans in rural areas live on less than $1.90 a day — six times more than in the urban areas.

Although economists predict that poverty levels will decline by 2025, food insecurity in the country is still a real issue with around eight million Kenyans (15 per cent of of the population) lacking ready access to food. Around 4 per cent of children in Kenya suffer from acute malnutrition.

It is no surprise that workers in Kenya will scramble in any way they can to make sure they and their families have enough to survive on.

One example are the metal workers at Ambira Jua Kali in Nairobi who provided an informal one-stop shop to deal with any problems relating to cars.

Back in 2019 a deal was struck by the Amalgamated Union of Kenyan Metal Workers (AUKMW) with the Ambira Jua Kali Artisans Association and the Migingo Self-Help Group Association.

The groundbreaking agreement promotes “a partnering framework for parties in addressing the issues of workers in the informal metalwork industry.”

The associations affiliate to the union, allowing for representation of these informal workers in legal disputes, conciliation and arbitration and to address social and economic needs of the workers.

The union also advocates for policy changes to improve the informal economy although, perhaps strangely, not to formalise the work.

At the time Rose Omamo, the visionary general secretary of the AUKMW, and now vice-president of the International Trade Union Confederation-Africa, said: “When we started organising the informal sector — mechanics, spray painters, welders, panel beaters and vehicle body builders — we realised that recruiting individuals was difficult, so we decided to work with the artisan associations.”

Instead of individual membership, the associations become affiliates of the AUKMW and their members get the same benefits as other union members.

Unlike formal workers, who can be organised from their factories and workplaces, informal artisans work from different places like their homes, markets and street corners.

When I visited the worksite I met Joshua, who is the legal representative of the workers. Joshua said the 300 workers wanted to link with the AUKMW because “unions are the voice of the voiceless.”

When English economists Sidney and Beatrice Webb put forward their classic definition of a trade union as “a continuous association of wage earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their working lives,” they understood that workers join unions to improve their economic conditions.

Here, rather than formally becoming members, a group of workers have combined collectively to improve their social and economic standing with the support of a trade union.

I also visited Hela, a garment-making company based in an Export Processing Zone Authority (EPZA) just outside Nairobi that makes garments for major transnational companies such as Calvin Kline and Tommy Hilfinger.

The EPZA is a state owned company set up in 1990 that provides tax breaks for companies to set up in Kenya and to smooth the way for the export of their goods.

Hela is one of around 32 companies in the zone employing around 2,500 workers at a wage in the region of 19,000 Kenyan shillings a month (about £98).

The stewards we met were adamant that there were no problems at the site and that the union and management worked closely together. 

It sounded very much like the always doomed to failure “partnership” approach to industrial relations championed by the Trades Union Congress during the 1980s and ’90s.

Whether or not the approach is also doomed to failure at Hela remains to be seen but it certainly helps to maintain more reliable employment and far more reliable source of income than the living hand to mouth existence offered through the informal economy in Kenya.

Regardless of the philosophy behind the partnership model of trade unionism at Hela it should come as no surprise that the union and its members will choose to prioritise an approach that prioritises maintaining stable employment and wages in an environment where a large part of the population is in perpetual survival mode.

But if workers are ever to move beyond mere survival in the global South, or anywhere else for that matter, they must understand that we are the ones that create the wealth of the world.

Half the workers at Hela were simply disposed of during the Covid pandemic — one whole shift of 2,500 people — with no real prospect of social support from a cash-strapped government.

Hela’s profits, as far as I could work out, were not significantly undermined as workers were given the “opportunity” to work longer and harder to fulfil the order book of the company.

I have no doubt that the likes of CK and Tommy Hilfinger also continued to profit from the massive mark-up on the garments produced for sale in the global North.

Meanwhile the workers just look to survive from hand to mouth in a vicious cycle that strong trade unionism must look to break.

Workers in the global South largely do not have the luxury of engaging in nice academic debates about the nature of their trade unionism. Mostly they just need to find the best way of getting through until tomorrow.

But if we can break the cycle of poverty or millions hoping to pop their heads above the poverty line we must engage in a trade rooted in the actual struggles of people where they are rather than one that assumes the struggles of the working class in the global North are exactly the same as the global majority in the South.

Roger McKenzie is Morning Star international editor.