The last time I wrote about Central Organisation of Trade Unions (Cotu) and Francis Atwoli, he came gun blazing at me online — and it is worth beginning here because it says something about the temperature that surrounds this conversation.
If aliens landed in Kenya and were only introduced to the country through Francis Atwoli, they would leave convinced that Kenyan workers are among the most stable in the world. From the outside, everything would appear orderly and settled. The billboards stretching across highways, the confident television interviews, and the long political career that has outlasted presidents, economic cycles, and entire generations of workers would all point to a system that has reached maturity. It would look like a labour movement that has already secured its place in history.
That impression would collapse the moment they stepped outside the studio. They would meet a graduate moving between unstable gigs that have nothing to do with years of education, a teacher whose salary disappears almost as soon as it arrives, a nurse working under relentless pressure that leaves no room for recovery, and a security guard whose life is measured in shifts rather than progress. They would meet millions of workers who wake up every day, go to work, and still remain trapped in the same economic place they started.
That is where the contradiction becomes impossible to ignore. Kenya’s labour reality does not match its labour representation, and the distance between the two has grown into one of the defining features of the country’s economic life.
At the centre of that contradiction sits Francis Atwoli. For close to a quarter of a century, he has remained the most recognisable face of organised labour in Kenya. Through multiple administrations, shifting policies, and rising economic pressure, his position has remained remarkably stable.
In most systems, such longevity would raise questions about renewal and accountability. Leadership that lasts this long is usually justified by either visible transformation or continuous challenge. In Kenya’s labour movement, however, it has become normalised.
This is precisely the space unions were historically created to occupy. They were never meant to function as ceremonial institutions that appear during Labour Day or issue statements during political moments. Their purpose was disruption, negotiation, and pressure when conditions demanded it.
In other parts of the world, that function still exists in varying forms. In France, labour action can bring entire sectors of the economy to a halt within days, forcing governments into direct negotiation. In Germany, wage agreements are structured across industries in ways that directly shape living standards rather than reacting to them. In Britain, nurses, teachers, and transport workers have repeatedly forced national conversations about pay and working conditions through sustained collective action.
The point is not that these systems are perfect, or that workers are not struggling within them.
In Kenya, that sense of force is harder to identify. What is more visible is the presence without measurable impact. Francis Atwoli remains a highly recognisable public figure with consistent access to national platforms and political spaces.
His voice is present in public discourse, his image is widely known, and his role in labour institutions is firmly established. Yet visibility alone does not answer the deeper question workers increasingly ask, which is what that visibility has translated into in their actual lives.
The International Labour Organization defines decent work in terms of dignity, fair pay, safety, protection, and collective bargaining power that produce real outcomes. It is a clear and simple framework that assumes work should improve life rather than merely occupy it. On paper, it is widely accepted. In practice, for many Kenyan workers, it feels increasingly disconnected from reality.
This is where the role of organised labour becomes central. A labour movement is not measured by how long its leadership remains in place or how visible its representatives are in public life. It is measured by whether it can reduce the distance between workers and the systems that determine their conditions.
In Kenya, that distance appears to have widened rather than narrowed. Workers observe institutions that speak on their behalf but rarely appear to shift the material conditions of their lives.
The Kenyan worker today is more educated, more exposed, and more globally aware than any previous generation. Yet that awareness exists alongside increasing economic strain.
That is why this conversation cannot remain about individuals alone. It is about institutions, their purpose, and whether they still function in ways that justify the trust placed in them. It is about whether longevity in leadership reflects strength or stagnation.
Kenya does not lack unions or formal labour structures. What it increasingly lacks is the translation of those structures into visible improvement in everyday life. That gap is now the defining feature of the labour question.
And it leaves workers with a final, uncomfortable reflection: if this is what decades of organised labour produce, then the real question is no longer what has changed, but what exactly would have been different without it.
