In a landmark case, Kenyan tea workers continue to fight for damages from a Scottish tea giant over musculoskeletal injuries

In a landmark case, Kenyan tea workers continue to fight for damages from a Scottish tea giant over musculoskeletal injuries

Forty-one-year-old Daniel Soi wears an orthopaedic waist brace to help him manage the pain caused by years of back-breaking work as a tea plucker. As many as 3,000 Kenyan workers have come together to file a class action lawsuit against James Finlay Kenya, accusing the company of failing to protect them from gaining workplace injuries.

(Dominic Kirui)
News

When 43-year-old Moses Bett joined James Finlay (Kenya) Ltd, one of the world’s biggest tea companies, to work as a tea plucker at Kapsongoi Estate in Kericho County in 2012, he was energetic and full of life. But after almost a decade of work, the father of three says that his work has virtually crippled him.

“I am reeling in pain. My waist and back hurts so bad that I have to swallow painkillers all the time,” he says. But he continues to pluck tea, despite the chronic pain he suffers, because he is desperate to give his children the chance of a better life: “When you see your children sent out of school, you will wake up from your deathbed and go give the last piece left of your life to see them go back to school. I want them to live a better life than the one I had,” says Bett, fighting back the tears.

In Kenya, the world’s largest exporter of black tea, the crop is grown in counties across the Great Rift Valley, often in massive tea estates owned by multinational companies such as James Finlay, Unilever Kenya (now known as Ekaterra Kenya) and Cargill. Last year Kenya exported an estimated US$1.07 billion of the crop, contributing to approximately 23 percent of the country’s foreign earnings. But despite the wealth generated by the big tea estates, working conditions in the tea industry – which employs approximately 80,000 directly and up to three million people throughout the value chain – are notoriously poor.

Bett has developed a musculoskeletal injury around his waist, which has resulted from pulling a tea plucking machine for years, and also carrying a basket full of fresh tea leaves as he plucks the green leaf [editor’s note: tea picked by hand is considered higher quality as machines often pluck older leaves]. Other tea pickers habitually suffer from pain in their neck, shoulders, hips, wrists, knees and other joints, as well as their backs.

The machines that Bett uses weigh over 12 kilograms and vibrate as two workers hold and pull them side by side across the hilly estate’s slopes. So far, his efforts to seek medical help have proven unsuccessful. James Finlay only allows its workers to seek healthcare from company clinics within its tea estates but Bett says that they are not helpful as they only gave him painkillers and told him to go back to work.

Bett says he is in excruciating pain and has to wear an orthopaedic back brace.

“A doctor at one of the private hospitals I was taken to after I was unable to stand or walk said that I had developed back, spinal and muscle injuries from pulling the [tea picking] machine for years. Nowadays, even with the pain, I have to tie [the machine] on my waist instead of pulling it with my hands, as I feel less pain that way,” he explains.

According to trade unionists speaking to Equal Times, between 2,500 and 3,000 workers have come together to file a case in Scotland against James Finlay Kenya, accusing the company of creating the terrible working conditions that have caused them life-limiting musculoskeletal injuries. In a class action lawsuit – an industry first – filed by the Nairobi-based human rights law firm Ronald K. Onyango Advocates, the workers are suing the company for failing to protect them from gaining workplace injuries. The workers, who first filed the case in November 2018, are also accusing the company of workplace harassment, including sexual harassment by managers.

Neither James Finlay nor government officials responded to Equal Times’ requests for an interview, but James Finlay’s managing director Simeon Hutchinson did travel to Scotland in March to attend the court session in which he argued that the court would not understand the cultural context of life in Kericho, claiming that the workers sustained their injuries as children while carrying water on their backs.

Bett says this is completely untrue, pointing to the fact that nobody else who he grew up with and who doesn’t work in a tea plantation has such injuries.

A historic, high-stakes case

This is the first time that workers have filed a high-stakes case against their employer in the tea production industry in Kenya, in a case involving mass musculoskeletal injuries sustained at the workplace.

If ruled in their favour, the case will serve as a precedence for other workers, not only in the tea industry to seek compensation for injuries sustained in the workplace.

Court proceedings began in March 2021, with seven workers suing JFK for damages in a personal injury court in Scotland. By December of that year, the plaintiffs had risen to 700, and the court was challenged on its jurisdiction to hear the case, with the company saying that it would have better been heard in a Kenyan court.

The Finlay group is one of the world’s biggest producers of tea and coffee, operating on five continents. It was founded in Scotland in 1750 by a cotton merchant named James Finlay. Its Kenya subsidiary is a Scottish company that was incorporated in 1925 with a registered address in Aberdeen, Scotland.

In January 2022, the Scottish Herald reported that tea pickers working for James Finlay (Kenya) typically got paid just £25 a week (approximately 4,236.52 Kenyan shillings) for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week for carrying up to 12 kilograms of tea on their back.

The situation is not so different in other tea estates. David Soi, a 41-year-old former tea picker at Ekaterra Tea Kenya (Unilever’s tea division), was forced to stop work after sustaining injuries to his back and waist after two decades of working as a tea picker for Ekaterra. Was dismissed from his job earlier this year after seeking medical services at a private hospital in Kericho Town.

“When I went back to the company clinic after that, the nurse there wrote on the back of my medical records leaflet that I had a habit of going to other hospitals. I did that because, at the estate, we were only given painkillers and told to go back to work. They were not helping me [get better],” Soi tells Equal Times.

During the worst of his injuries, when Soi was unable to even get out of bed for almost a month and a half, his wife travelled from their rural home to his house at the estate so that she could take care of him. But with both breadwinners unable to earn money during this time, it took a huge toll on the family: “My wife was the one taking care of the kids while also working on our farm to produce food as I worked here so that I could raise money for school fees,” he says.

After his dismissal, took another job as a night guard, but has only been able to work three nights a week, and the long, chilly nights have not been kind to his back and he is forced to work through the pain. “Especially during this rainy season, the cold makes my back really painful. But I have to be there so I can send my children to school. I haven’t let my current boss know about my condition because he will end up letting me go. No one would want to hire someone who is sick,” he adds.

Widespread injuries

Dr. Lang’at Nyigei, an orthopaedic surgeon based at the Bomet County Referral Hospital says that one of the causes of musculoskeletal injuries is strains and sprains.

“You can injure muscles, tendons, or ligaments by lifting something too heavy or not lifting safely. Lifting heavy objects and bending too much strains the back muscles and ligaments leading to musculoskeletal injuries and back pain,” Dr. Nyigei explains.

He says that treatment for these injuries involves a number of medical practices, such as the use of prescription drugs to relieve pain, physical therapy to strengthen muscles so they can support the spine and also improve flexibility, which helps to avoid another injury, as well as steroid injections to relieve pain and reduce inflammation. He adds that some injuries and conditions need surgical repair.

Jared Momanyi, the Bomet branch secretary at Kenya Plantations and Agricultural Workers Association (KPAWU) says that both the government and the employers are aware of the injuries to these workers, only that they don’t want to act.

“Employers claim that they have insured the employees and provide medical services to treat them in case of work-related accidents and injuries. They know this because there is an Act of Parliament called the Work Benefit Insurance Act of 2007 that was enacted by Parliament and is used to assist employees. The Act was made to ensure that workers are protected, meaning both parties admit that these injuries exist,” Momanyi explains.

He says that musculoskeletal injuries affect up to 90 per cent of all the workers in tea plantations, owing to the long hours they carry tea baskets on their backs, the heavy machinery they use to pluck tea, and the many years they often spend working on these plantations.

“Research done by a law firm that has been working to recruit these current and former workers as part of the case found that as long as one works for at least five years on these plantations, they automatically are affected and are sick in one way or the other,” Momanyi says.

But despite all of the pain, with decent work hard to come by in Kericho, Soi has just one wish: “I hope that they will consider giving me a good [retirement] package, or simply take me back to work. I am willing to still work there, as long as I am able to provide for my children,” Soi concludes, as he looks away, in pain.