How giant tea companies exploit Kenyan plantation workers

Saman Gunadasa

This writer visited Kenyan tea estates earlier this year and witnessed first-hand the ruthless regime maintained by multinational companies. Sri Lankan and Indian plantation companies often cite Kenya to demand similar conditions in order to compete in the world tea market.

Lucrative Kenyan tea plantations are owned by British corporate giants, including Unilever and James Finlay. As in other former colonial countries, tea plantation companies started in Kenya under British rule.

However, major British firms, such as Brooke Bond and Lipton, which initially operated in Sri Lanka, shifted to Kenya in the early 1970s after the Colombo government of Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike “nationalised” tea estates under state control. Today Kenya is the world’s largest tea exporter, contributing 25 percent of black tea exports.

Tea estate employees about to start work

Kenya was a British colony until 1963. Britain brutally suppressed the anti-colonial Mau Mau uprising from 1952 to 1960. According to the Kenya Human Rights Commission, 90,000 Kenyans were killed, many more were maimed and hundreds of thousands were held in concentration camps.

While Kenya’s first leader Jomo Kenyatta pursued nationalist policies, foreign investment dominated the economy. Kenyatta’s son, President Uhuru Kenyatta, remains in power, manipulating elections and suppressing workers’ struggles. Under the banner of fighting “terrorism,” he is running a police state.

During British rule, workers were brought to the Kenyan plantations from oppressed tribes in Kenya, as well as from Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. Workers were subjected to iron discipline, with companies even conducting canings.

Today the brutality continues. Child labour, along with casual labour without job security and underpayment are prevalent.

A study published in India titled “Production and Export of Value Added Tea in India and its Global Competitiveness” (Economic Affairs, Vol. 62, December 2017) noted that the “labour productivity in kilograms per man was the highest in Kenya followed by India,” partly due to the use of “domestic labour” and “quality plucking.”

“Domestic labour” refers to seasonal workers who are employed from a pool of labour in the plantation region, only during the peak season. Once laid off, seasonal workers must quit the plantations and look for other employment. “Quality plucking” includes mechanised harvesting methods, with higher targets than manual plucking.

Permanent workers in Unilever’s Kericho county plantation can make 515 Kenyan shillings ($US5.15) a day, barely sufficient for daily expenses. A very basic meal costs around 100 shillings and a fast food restaurant meal is well over 500 shillings. Manual plucking workers get 16 shillings per kilo of plucked and sorted tea. To take home 515 shillings, she or he will have to pluck a back-breaking average of 32 kilos.

According to the 2016 report of True Price, a non-governmental organisation, titled The True Price of Tea from Kenya, a permanent plantation worker’s wage was only 62 percent of a living wage.

Four workers are assigned to each mechanised plucking machine. Two operate the machine, while another carries the tea leaves to the weighing station and the fourth sorts the plucked leaves, choosing only the most tender.

This method can harvest 700 to 1,500 kilos per day, depending on the richness of the tender leaves and how fast workers operate. Supervisors drive workers to achieve daily targets set by managers. In the Unilever plantations, “clerks” in police-type uniforms ride bikes, monitoring the activities of workers.

In large plantations, one can see many workers’ quarters or villages, consisting of single room or two-room houses comparable to plantation workers’ houses in India and Sri Lanka. Often more than one family lives in a house.

Tea estate workers' homes

In Kericho, plantation corporations run schools and basic hospitals, with school fees deducted from workers’ pay. According to workers, most children do not continue to higher grades because the families cannot afford the schooling, and the children must work for a living. Even students who have studied up to college level are unemployed.