This site has carried two series that touch on employment issues.
Under #UnemploymentCrisisInKenya, we have exposed companies that are secretly and not so secretly laying off staff.
On the other hand, the #SlaveryInKenya series highlighted issues to do with mistreatment and poor working conditions at the workplace.
We are balanced and only report as received after investigations. We don’t discriminate.
But exposing rot without offering solutions is tantamount to mischief.
What I have noticed in my many years of being a Kenyan is that we assume alot, we assume that our level of awareness is the same.
We assume that all people are woke and that there are no ignorant brothers and sisters among us.
Many Kenyans don’t know what the law on employment says. This is bad.
See, ignorance of the law is no defence, and as such we have decided to come up with this educative piece.
The first thing is to free your mind from oppression, yes, you need the job, but maybe your comfort zone mentality is what it making you a slave. A slave who accepts every manner of trash and bullshit at the work place, just to keep the job. Poor souls.
1. Know your rights.
Ignorance of the law is no defense and as such, every Kenyan must acclimatize themselves with what the law says.
You can download Employment Act or the whole constitution from the web by a simple Google search.
Get to know what the Act says on the rights of aon employee, health and safety at work and talk to the management eveb through an anonymous letter, on what needs to be improved.
2. If you have been fired
Were you sacked according to the provisions of the Employment Act. Did your employer breaknany law in your firing?
Most of them do and they ride on the ignorance to get away with it.
You should look at the terms of your being laid-off and if the employer broke the law, you need to head to the Employment and Labour Relations Court.
If you can’t afford a lawyer, that’s a problem, but it shouldn’t deny you from going to court. There are some lawyers who work pro-bono and then pay themselves from what you’ve won in court.
If you’ve been fired as a group. You can fundraise for your court costs.
Studies show that since 2013, employers have lost a case at the court in a ration of out of 3 cases, 2 are won by employees.
3. Low salary
Remuneration must be commensurate with the job you are doing.
I know of a company, Ellams Limited, the printers of airtime for Safaricom, Airtel, Telkom covering East and Central Africa, but this company despite making Fast Moving High Security Consumer Goods, it pays its staff peanuts.
The staff their work like Slaves with no rest on the weekends, yet they suffer silently like Slaves, for fear of losing a meagre 12k salaries.
Let me ask you, a company that prints scratch cards can’t afford to pay the lowest person 50k per month, give them medical cover and drive them home in the morning and evenings?
Kenyans, THINK.
4. No medical Cover
How can employees work without a medical cover?.
Govt makes glossy speaches in high end hotels about employee welfare, the betterment of financial sector yet can’t debate simple things as worker insurance.
Industrial area Slaves where Indians reign Supreme have no personal injury cover.
Poor economic prospects have dwindled their hopes of making it in th rural and peri-urban areas and have migrated to the Big city where they are exploited by the rogue Asians.
Kenya, how can you be helped?
5. No union
Strike and join a union, you’ll thank me later.
See, the law allwes for anyone to join a union.
The Asians of Indian extraction have out down Kenyans in industrial area because theyve been threatened with a sack if they join any union.
What’s worse? To live under the fear of being sacked forever or to strike/rise up now and change the face of industrial area factories?
The issue of union taking bribes and siding with rogue employers will be a ting of the past if those members also put the management of their respective unions to task.
Conclusions
Please don’t believe the lies that the old guards in government often tell. The have been fond of telling the youths to ‘not wait for employment but to create one’. How appalling and insensitive?
These same creatures are the ones who have made it hard for anyone to break even and become rich from businesses due to bad policies and corruption.
Hasn’t it been said or isn’t it true that one cannot make it in Kenya unless they join politics.
The bad thing is that not all of us can be politicians or have friends in high places in government.
What to do
Ask your government to put measures in place so that anyone can do business and prosper even without working as a civil servant.
Above all, use provisions in the article 37 of the constitution to make things work in this country
