Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Antony, the Coca Cola Bottle Inspector

On a Matatu, the night that I saw an undercover cop running towards a crowd with an AK-47 to bust some gangsters, I met a guy named Antony. He seemed soft-spoken and shy, but pretty intelligent. The other night he gave me a call because he was in Mtopanga hanging out with his best friend and co-worker.

He had told me that he was a bottle inspector at the coast region Coca Cola bottling plant in nearby Mtwapa, as was his friend/co-worker. They were sitting around sipping on whisky and Sprite, watching some TV and listening to music. After a bit of chatting, they started to tell me about their jobs. Oh man does globalization make you mad when you hear stories like this:

Antony and Karanje (his best-friend and co-worker) are what they called “cash-workers”. This means they are paid a set rate per day they work. Their days are 8 (or more) hours long, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Zero vacation, zero holidays, zero overtime pay. No matter how many hours they work, they still get the same daily wage. Their daily wage is 390 shillings, or $5.50. They explained also that to get to work, considering their hours and plant location, costs 130 Kenya shillings, leaving them with less than $4 of overall earnings per day…

A 15 year-old makes twice that serving fries. Antony and Karanje went to an institute to study bottle inspection before applying for jobs in a competitive market.

There are a total of 6 bottle inspectors at the plant who rotate on 8 hour shifts throughout the day and night so that there are 2 inspectors on at all hours of the day. The only way they can get time off is by arranging for their co-workers to cover their shifts.

The plant used to be in Mombasa town, but recently moved 30 minutes out of town to Mtwapa so that they could get water from a borehole instead of from the city of Mombasa. The owner of this Coca Cola branch, a man by the name of “Shah”, decided that now that the plant was in a rural location, wages could be lowered. Apparently moving the plant to a lower income area was excuse to lower wages, even though employees now have to travel farther to work.

Coca Cola’s saving grace is that their other plants in Kenya are owned by Coca Cola Africa who, Antony told me, treats their employees well. This plant and Mr. Shah are alone in their ridiculousness. I asked about unionization of workers. I was told that there was once a union but that it dissolved upon the plant moving to Mtwapa, and that there didn’t seem to be another one near creation.

These guys work so hard for so little doing a technical job. It allows them to come home to their wives with consistent cash, but at the price of having little to no life. That night Antony and Karanje were celebrating their form of holiday. They were told they didn’t need to come to work since there wasn’t much to be done. It was great to get to relax, but that meant no 390 shillings for either of them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Eli, This all sounds like such an amazing and eye opening experience and I'm so happy you get to be there! I hope you're still not frusterated with not being told your jobs, knowing you I'm sure you've already adjusted and could be running the show. :) Please be careful though, I don't want you to come home with ak47 holes in you! I miss you kid, be careful and I'm so proud of everything you do!