HISTORY OF THE UNION
The Rift Valley Railways Workers union did apply for its registration in the year 2007 with the Registrar of Trade Unions after the membership became enchanted with the services as were being offered by the Union that was in place and which union overtime had been compromised and gradually translated itself into becoming an employer’s union.
The said union ceased to represent and articulate the interests of its members yet on the contrary began to gradually yet systematically rejudice and disenfranchise the genuine membership of their rights as are affirmed in the Supreme Law.
The said union as well, did negotiate away the rights of members so that the Opinion Leaders amongst the employees opted to have an alternative Trade Union by lodging an application with The Registrar of Trade Unions to have the above Trade Union registered for purposes of countering and negating the ill motivated intentions of the leadership of the other union that had long abdicated its lawfully mandated role of articulating the members interests and elected to dine and wine with the employer at the utter prejudice of its general membership.
The application for the said registration was to experience an uphill task with the laws in place completely against the nascenting Trade Union with the Legal regime then, as well, quite uncomfortable and repressive to the interests of the general workforce. It is until the year 2010 after the New Legal regime coming in place that the process of having the Rift Valley Railways Workers Union had to finally be registered, its application for registration having been refused by the Registrar of Trade Unions. The Promoters of the Trade Union had to lodge a Suit in the High Court, The Employment and Labour Relations Court, in Appeal 9 of 2010 against the Decision of the Registrar of Trade Union to refuse to have the Trade Union Registered.
The promoters of the said Union had to experience another challenge to the effect that the matter then proceeding to court required advocacy services on behalf of the union. For the mandate and role as was bestowed upon the Secretary General in Section 2 of The Labour Relations Act 2007, the said Official in spite of his inadequacy and the apparent capacitation that year for capacitation, the union was represented in court by virtue of the said mandate and by God’s grace the Registrar of Trade Unions decision to refuse to register the Workers Union, after two years of litigation, was Quashed and the said state official directed through a court Order, to enter the Name of the union in the Roll of Trade Unions in the Country, and to pay for the costs of the suit.
The Rift Valley Railways Workers Union finally acquired its Legal Personality on the 21st day of December 2012 and a Certificate of Registration issued to the effect following the said Court’s directive to the Registrar of Trade Union to have the Registration of the Union formalised.
For the other players within the system who were not at all keen to have the above union offer services to its members tentacles to ensure that this objective was realised with ease were extended to the Ministry of labour so that when it came to the gazetement of the Unions account, a an obligation that is the Cabinet Secretary’s, and which is expected to be automate once the Union acquires a Legal personality, was artificially stagnated. The Cabinet Secretary then under instruction not to have the said account gazzetted. It took the intervention of the Court’s directives to the Cabinet Secretary for Labour to have the said Union’s account gazzetted subsequent to the filing of a Notice of Motion in Cause 334 of 2013 and a subsequent application for contempt proceedings against the said Cabinet Secretary for refusing to comply with the Court Directives to have the Unions Account gazzetted. It is only after the said Cabinet Secretary had been served with the said Contempt Proceeding that the Unions Account had to be urgently gazzetted before the said Cabinet Secretary was due in court.
In spite of the said Union having recruited over 800 members of the employers’ employees, the structure that had been established then, subsequent to the lone union in existence then, betraying the mandate bestowed upon them by members and obligated upon them by law, thereby utterly prejudicing the interests of the members thereon by failing to negotiate for better retrenchment terms and or being compromised to accept poor terms on behalf of their members, yet with deliberate and full connivance of certain individuals within the employers echelons of management.