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Letter from Nairobi:
Improving the Lot of Kenyan Workers in Export Processing Zones

By Ona Hahs, Human Rights First Kenya Research Intern

Ona Hahs, a Swahili-speaking student at the University of Michigan Law School, is currently in Kenya completing a summer internship with Human Rights First. Ona is conducting research on workers’ rights issues in Kenya’s Export Processing Zones, and looking at how certain incentives that negatively affect workers’ welfare had been created in law to attract investors. What follows is a brief letter from the field from Ona about some of the history leading up to labor unrest in January of this year, and a glimpse of the current state of affairs. A full report will be made available in the fall.

July 31, 2003

In January of this year, workers in Kenya’s Export Processing Zones (EPZs) went on strike to demand fair pay, better working conditions and job security. After years of working in difficult and often inhumane conditions, they were urging newly-elected President Mwai Kibaki to understand and combat the suffering in the EPZs.

The EPZ structure was introduced in Kenya in 1990 to attract foreign investment and address Kenya’s tremendous unemployment problem. EPZ companies were promised a 10-year income tax holiday and other financial incentives, plus reliable infrastructure and the services of an EPZ Authority as a ‘one-stop-shop’ to avoid bureaucratic hurdles often faced when setting up a Kenyan company.

However, there were relatively few companies in the Kenyan EPZs until the passage in the United States of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) in 2000 and AGOA II in 2002. AGOA provides for tariff and quota-fee imports until 2008 for over two thousand products, including textiles and apparel. It also allows Kenya and other “lesser developed” African countries to use raw materials from outside the U.S. or Africa for the production of apparel until September 2004. Taking advantage of these provisions, several apparel manufacturers with histories of questionable factory practices shifted production to Kenya, creating a sweatshop phenomenon in the EPZs that Kenya had not seen before.

For many years, the government protected the EPZ enterprises in order to ensure foreign investment. While not ever explicitly exempting EPZ factories from the applicable labor laws, the government often chose not to enforce the laws. When difficult economic times struck in the mid 1990’s, the government passed an amendment to labor law making it easier for companies to declare workers “redundant,” and lay them off. Then in the late 1990s, the government exempted EPZ companies from the health and safety inspections required for other employers. Because of these explicit measures and non-enforcement of the other labor laws, the EPZs seemed untouchable and prospects for their workers were bleak.

In January 2003, optimistic about the new administration, EPZ workers hoped that the barriers to their welfare could be dismantled at last. The strikes brought the issue to the forefront, and the government responded immediately with a call for freedom of association in the EPZs. The unions were given a period of time in which to organize workers and claim recognition in the EPZ factories.

The plight of EPZ workers has been improving since the strikes in January. The unions have attained recognition in several companies, and collective bargaining agreements are now being negotiated in nine EPZ apparel factories. Equally important, the government claims that the industrial health and safety laws are currently being revised to eliminate special treatment. Human Rights First will continue to monitor these developments.