Sipping on Strife — The complex mug of tea, labour and resistance in Kenya.

Trouble is brewing in Kenya as tea pickers, akin to the Luddites in industrialising Britain, are actively dismantling tea picking machinery. For instance, in May 2023 alone, these workers demolished nine machines valued at $1.2 million, belonging to the tea giant Lipton1.

Kenya, a large tea exporter, is undergoing a significant transition as major multinationals overseeing tea cultivation in the country increasingly favour mechanised harvesting methods. Hundreds of thousands of workers, whose livelihood is at risk, can read the tea leaves.

Many of them, native to the region, are intimately familiar with the impending danger, bearing the multi-generational scars of their ongoing battles to preserve their ties to the land, which serves as their essential source of livelihood.

Historical struggle

Their grandparents, primarily subsistence farmers cultivating various food crops year-round, were displaced violently when the colonial administration designated many of these fertile regions as the “white” highlands2. They then compelled labour from these individuals by instituting oppressive taxes such as the hut tax3, which could only be paid in the colonial currency, the shilling. This coercion forced them to toil on the expansive colonial settler farms they had previously owned. These developments not only severed the people’s ties to the land and their self-sufficiency but also transformed the agricultural landscape into highly specialised monocropping, centred on cash crops like tea intended for direct export to the colonial metropoles.

The opposition to this process of proletarianization steadily expanded, blending and mixing with the fight for independence. By 1963, while independence was achieved, the Kenyan economy was already addicted to tea. Consequently, even though the post-colonial government had to repurchase the colonial farms from departing white settlers and redistribute much of this land to the original inhabitants, their new means of livelihood would still be dependent on tea cultivation.

Initially, these farms were sizable enough to support the new African owners and were often worked on by mainly family members. The returns were favourable, allowing them, for instance, to invest in their children’s education.

However, over the decades, as the population quadrupled by the turn of the century, these estates underwent gradual subdivision into smaller and economically unfeasible tea farms. The tea sector also experienced globalisation, drawing the interest of prominent multinational companies like Finlay and Unilever, which entered the market to acquire and amalgamate these farms. Hence, the ties that many individuals had to the land and their self-sufficiency were being disrupted anew. They could no longer rely solely on their family farms and were forced to seek wage labour, often finding employment on other farms or migrating to urban centres.

What is in your ‘cuppa’?

A 2016 report4 spilled the tea by exposing the harsh working conditions on Kenyan tea plantations. Workers are hired daily, enduring up to 74-hour weeks without breaks, as they are paid per kilogram plucked. This often forces them to survive on a single daily meal and suffer common injuries such as back strains or respiratory illnesses from pesticide exposure. These workers, majority of whom are women and children, are paid just 62% of Kenya’s official living wage.

These plantations employ seasonal workers primarily during the peak season. Before completing three months of work, tea factory employees are laid off and subsequently rehired as casual workers. This tactic allows the plantations to circumvent providing benefits such as sick pay, maternity leave and pension rights.

Not my cup of tea

The more than 300,000 tea harvesters in Kenya haven’t accepted these changes quietly and have constantly stirred the pot.

They’ve joined the Kenya Plantation Workers Union (KPAWU), but big multinationals like James Finlay and Unilever won’t discuss collective bargaining agreements with the union.

They’ve sought government assistance, leading to a government taskforce5 proposing a recommendation that would limit mechanisation to 60% of operations. However, tea companies argued that mechanisation was crucial for global competitiveness, stating one machine could replace 100 workers, reducing harvesting costs from $11 cents to $3 cents per kilogram of tea.

They went on strike in 2016 but the police opened fire on the picket line killing one person and injuring dozens of others.

Final sip

This is the context within which tea pickers have now resulted in destroying tea picking machines.

It is not just a storm in a teacup, but a movement fuelled by a multi-generational struggle against continued proletarianisation infused through colonialism and global neoliberalism. It is not a group of people against technology, but labour pushing back against the excesses of capitalism and exploitation.