Lesson-150535-8

The project's cooperation with the Federation of Kenya Employers has provided initial training to employers who are committed to developing and formalizing grievance-handling procedures, which is likely to increase respect for workers’ rights by enforcing laws and ordinances, conducting inspections, and applying dispute resolution mechanisms. The Federation of Kenya Employers has trained personnel from 30 employers (seven apparel and 23 tea companies) on effective grievance-handling procedures in the workplace. The project's staff shared their plans to develop procedures and provide follow-up training for employers to effectively use tools to handle grievances. Such procedures should align with International Labor Organization grievance-handling principles, including the right to submit a grievance without suffering any prejudice and the right to an effective grievance examination procedure open to all workers. Such workplace procedures may offer an avenue to help workers ensure their rights are respected and help strengthen businesses by “constituting a safety valve which helps to prevent the outburst of serious disputes.” Such procedures could potentially provide a confidential system for airing complaints directly to the inspectorate. For example, the assessment proposed that workers who are victims of noncompliance be able to signal problems directly to the inspectorate via the electronic case management system and recommended that the project invest in real-time information and communications technology approaches such as telephone and SMS hotlines associated with the electronic case management system. The recent exposure of systematic abuse in the tea sector has made clear that workers’ grievances have neither been aired nor effectively managed. Such an “outburst” has occurred and highlights the urgency of this promising practice in the Kenyan context.