The Solidarity Center works with the Kenyan labor movement to boost wages, address corruption within political systems and advocate for pro-worker economic policies. Credit: Solidarity Center
The Solidarity Center works with the Kenyan labor movement to boost wages, address corruption within national and local political systems and advocate for pro-worker economic policies and shared prosperity.
The Solidarity Center’s principal partner is the Kenyan Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU-Kenya). With COTU-Kenya and its member unions, the Solidarity Center works to empower women and youth in trade unions to better enable them to advocate for their rights as union members and negotiate for improved working conditions.
Solidarity Center’s programs in Kenya include support for legal recognition of the workplace rights of domestic workers, who as workers in the informal economy, are not covered by wage laws, or job safety and health rules. Many workers, including domestic workers, migrate to other countries in search of better job opportunities, and Solidarity Center partners with unions and allies to educate workers about the risks of exploitation if they travel abroad, and to provide a broad range of assistance as they return to Kenya from jobs abroad.
The Central Organization of Trade Unions–Kenya (COTU-K) said the country’s recent decision to lift its ban on workers migrating to Qatar and Saudi Arabia for jobs is “ill advised,” and urges the government to keep the ban in place until the Ministry of Labor provides...
When Rose Omamo started work in 1988 as a mechanic in a vehicle assembly plant in Kenya, she was one of two women in a workplace dominated by hundreds of men. Her employer refused to recognize the women’s basic requests, and even her union, the Amalgamated Union of...
When Mwahamisi Josiah Makori, a Kenyan mother of three who worked as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia, first arrived at her new employer’s house, she was given only 20 minutes before she began work. After that, she began a three-month period which involved hard...