Kenya is increasingly becoming a high-wage economy, a trend that
threatens to stifle foreign investments, unless the Government tackles
the spiralling cost of living.
However, the institutions that are expected to force the Government
to act – trade unions – are either conniving with the employers to pinch
workers or are simply incapable of progressive ideas to alleviate the
suffering of workers.
One way of doing it, economists say, is for trade unions to shift
strategy and focus more on reining in the cost of living and runaway
graft in public sector, which they say is the trigger of astronomical
rise in inflation.
In the recent past, trade unions have been taking turns to demand
higher salaries from employers, but questions are equally being raised
about the unions’ complicity in harmful economic policies and programmes
that have precipitated current plight of their members.
With more than 300,000 workers in public institutions having downed
or are planning to down tools in protest over low pay and spiralling
cost of living, economist Oduor Ong’wen warns the risk of the economy
being swamped in excess liquidity is high. Ong’wen warns that the
current budget is already constrained to allow the Government to meet
the demands of striking teachers, university lecturers, and doctors.
Circumciser’s Knife
“Strikes have a contagious effect. Any industrial unrest in public
institutions spills over the private sector. Persistent focus on
salaries is the downside of trade unionism in Kenya. They do not realise
that high salaries is recipe for unemployment. Trade union leadership,
although right in pushing for their members’ rights and welfare, have
failed to educate them on inflationary consequences,” says Ong’wen.
Picketing workers in almost all sectors of the economy does not make
it any easier for the economy to attract more investments and create
more jobs as the trade unions press for salary hikes to match the cost
of living, according to Dr Eric Aligula, the chief executive of the
Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (Kippra).
“The basic question is: ‘Why are workers striking?’ It is because the
cost of services is high. We need to manage speculative investments
that create salary inequities. Inequality causes discontent,” says the
Kippra boss.
Although public support favours them, outright yodellers, who do not
understand their mandate, lead a majority of the trade. Consequently,
there is a general feeling they are missing out on opportunities to
protect their members against high cost of services by condoning free
market economic policies that expose workers to the vicissitudes of
supply and demand.
In the 1980s when the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
(IMF) prescribed the Central Organisations of Trade Unions (Cotu)
supports the Bretton Woods institutions. The ensuing public and private
sector layoffs triggered high incidence of poverty, which in turn
escalated insecurity and high cost of living.
In the recent months, Cotu too has found itself entangled in the
financial scams at National Social Security Fund and the National
Hospital Insurance Fund – both of which are capitalised by workers’
contributions.
The chairman of the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) Wilson
Sossion agrees traders have not lived up to their calling and sometimes
are the cause of the workers’ miseries.
“We are not demanding salaries for the sake of it. We are reacting to
inflation. By and large we signed a collective bargaining agreement
with the Government that has not been honoured. If the same Government
kept inflation low and reduced the services, then there would be no need
for a pay rise,” Sossion, who agrees trade unions should be doing more
to alleviate the agony of workers, says.
The unions, through unhonoured collective bargaining agreements, have
become synonymous with institutional rot in Government and the private
sector. Through connivance with public institutions like schools,
hospitals, parastatals, ministries and industries, trade unions have
become vessels of corruption as officials are induced by employers to
undermine the salary pacts they sign, a fact economists link to the
current high cost of living.
According to Aligula, high salaries mean an exacerbation of social
and economic inequities, which in turn lead to more social crises.
“We need to shift from paying more salaries as this will make Kenya a
high-wage economy. We have to think of different mechanisms of reducing
the financial strain,” he says.
With employers increasingly becoming stingy and indifferent to the
plight of workers, there is new thinking that trade unions should focus
more on picketing for low consumer prices, as excess liquidity in the
economy is counter-productive.
He concurs with the striking teachers, university lecturers, doctors,
nurses, telecommunication workers and aviation workers, who are
demanding salary increments and improved working conditions.
Circumciser’s Knife
However, the Government through the ministries of Transport, Health,
and Education maintains that implementing CBAs it signed with striking
workers would open a huge hole in the budget.
Industrial unrest has become a common feature of the country’s labour
market, but employers and workers have turned it into a cat and mouse
chase. Save for freight company DHL, which last month negotiated, signed
and implemented a CBA with its workers in a record two days, majority
of the agreements entered in the past two years have been disregarded by
employers.
Dr Noah Chune, Cotu chief economist and director of research and
education, attributes industrial unrest to failure by the State to
mandate the Ministry of Labour to address industrial relation issues.
“The focus should be the middle class, which is critical in setting
salary scales. At present, Kenya does not have a recognisable middle
class, which in established systems is used as the benchmark for
negotiation salaries.
It is against this backdrop (turning the ministry into complaints
kiosk) that industrial unrest is handled haphazardly,” says Chune.
He says if the Government had followed the guidelines agreed with
Cotu on minimum wage, which is calculated at Sh27,000, it would have
failed to create more jobs. The lowest paid teacher earns Sh11,000 per
month, while the lowest paid civil servant earns Sh7,000.
The reasoning is that public servants and teachers have to moonlight
to make ends meet. Moonlighting, says Sossion, affects productivity
negatively as workers have to channel their energies to side-jobs to
seal their budget deficits.
“In Kenya, you must moonlight to survive because there is no control
on basic needs. People do not have enough money to spend on services.”
In the past year or so, the cost of living has hit through the roof.
The price of staple food went up threefold, taking a cue from increases
in fuel prices. The effect of the cost of fuel that spread to the
transport and energy sectors, which in turn touched off inflationary
gallop, has not been addressed adequately despite the easing of prices
on the international market.
In the interim period, salaries remained stagnant. The silence of the
Government over high food, fuel, and transport costs remains largely
unchallenged as trade unions focus more on salaries as scant attention
is paid to rising costs of services.
Source : http://www.standardmedia.co.ke
No comments:
Post a Comment