FROM THE ECONOMIC STRUGGLE TO THE CLASS POLITICAL STRUGGLE
To the Nurses, Midwives, Health Workers, Workers and Oppressed Masses of Kenya,
The Communist Party Marxist Kenya declares its unwavering solidarity with the nurses and midwives who continue their nationwide industrial struggle.
We salute the courage, determination and collective discipline of the nursing workforce.
This is a struggle for a Collective Bargaining Agreement. It is a struggle for implementation of agreements already made. It is a struggle for permanent and pensionable employment for Universal Health Coverage workers. It is a struggle for career progression, fair remuneration, decent working conditions and the dignity of labour.
But it is also more than this.
The Communist Party Marxist Kenya understands that the economic struggle cannot be separated from the political conditions under which the working class lives and works.
The nurse does not negotiate with an abstract employer.
The nurse confronts a system in which public services are subjected to fiscal pressures, bureaucratic restrictions and political decisions while the working people are repeatedly told that there is no money for decent wages, adequate staffing, medicines and functioning hospitals.
This is why the nurses’ struggle must be defended as both an economic struggle and a class political struggle.
We must fight for the immediate demands.
We must fight to win them.
But we must also understand why the same grievances return again and again.
THE STRUGGLE IS AGAINST A SYSTEM, NOT ONE OFFICE
The present confrontation involves the Council of Governors, the Salaries and Remuneration Commission, national government institutions and county administrations.
But the Communist Party Marxist Kenya does not reduce the problem to individual governors, bureaucrats or officials.
These institutions operate within a broader neo colonial political and economic order whose priorities are determined by the interests of the ruling classes and the requirements of capital.
The question before the working class is therefore not simply:
How much will the nurse be paid?
It is also:
Who determines the allocation of society’s wealth?
Whose interests determine public expenditure?
Who controls the health system?
Who decides whether public healthcare is treated as a social right or as a market opportunity?
Who governs in the interests of the working people?
These are political questions.
The nurses’ strike brings these questions into the open.
The state may attempt to present the dispute as an administrative disagreement between an employer and employees. But the persistence of the struggle demonstrates something deeper.
The working class is confronting the political and institutional mechanisms through which its labour is controlled and the social wealth it produces is distributed.
THE ECONOMIC STRUGGLE IS A SCHOOL OF CLASS STRUGGLE
CPMK rejects both economism and empty revolutionary phrase mongering.
We reject economism because workers cannot permanently liberate themselves merely by winning isolated improvements within an exploitative system.
But we equally reject the notion that immediate economic struggles are somehow unimportant or politically inferior.
The fight for wages is a class struggle.
The fight for permanent employment is a class struggle.
The fight for a CBA is a class struggle.
The fight for decent hospitals is a class struggle.
The fight against privatisation and commodification of healthcare is a class struggle.
The task of the revolutionary Party is to connect these struggles, draw out their political lessons and assist the working class to move from fragmented resistance towards organised class power.
The worker learns through struggle.
The worker organises through struggle.
The worker develops political consciousness through struggle.
Therefore, we say:
From the workers, to the workers.
From the struggle, to the struggle.
From immediate demands, towards class political consciousness.
This is the living application of the mass line.
A REVOLUTIONARY SALUTE TO THE CPMK PARTY FRACTION WITHIN KNUNM
The Party extends a revolutionary salute to the comrades of the CPMK Party Fraction working within the Kenya National Union of Nurses and Midwives.
We recognise your work in strengthening organisation, defending unity, combating opportunism and helping connect the immediate grievances of health workers with the broader conditions affecting the working class.
We particularly salute your efforts to ensure that the strike becomes not merely a period of industrial action but also an opportunity for political education, organisation and collective learning.
But comrades, remember this fundamental principle:
The Party does not substitute itself for the workers.
The Party works among the workers.
The Party learns from the workers.
The Party helps organise the lessons of struggle.
The Party helps transform scattered resistance into conscious and organised class action.
The revolutionary cadre must therefore remain rooted among the nurses, listen to their experiences, understand their immediate concerns and help unite these concerns with the broader struggle of the working class and oppressed masses.
OUR IMMEDIATE DEMANDS
The Communist Party Marxist Kenya supports the immediate demands of the striking nurses and calls for:
1. The immediate conclusion and implementation of the 2025 to 2029 Collective Bargaining Agreement without further bureaucratic obstruction.
2. Immediate implementation of outstanding agreements and obligations arising from previous collective bargaining processes, including the 2017 Return to Work Agreement.
3. Immediate and comprehensive absorption of Universal Health Coverage workers into permanent and pensionable employment, together with settlement of outstanding obligations owed to workers.
4. Nationwide implementation of fair and transparent career progression guidelines for nurses and midwives across all 47 counties.
5. An immediate end to victimisation, intimidation and arbitrary disciplinary action against workers exercising their lawful labour and democratic rights.
6. Immediate reinstatement of workers unjustly dismissed in connection with previous industrial struggles.
7. Democratic and transparent negotiation of all outstanding collective bargaining agreements without bureaucratic obstruction.
8. Adequate public financing of healthcare, sufficient staffing, medicines, equipment and safe working conditions for both health workers and patients.
These are not unreasonable demands.
They are demands for dignity.
They are demands for justice.
They are demands arising from the labour of workers who sustain the public health system every day.
AGAINST AUSTERITY AND IMPERIALIST ECONOMIC DOMINATION
The Party further calls upon workers and the people to examine the broader economic forces shaping public expenditure.
Kenya’s public finances cannot be discussed separately from debt, fiscal discipline, austerity and the wider system of imperialist economic domination.
The question is not merely whether international financial institutions issue one particular instruction concerning nurses.
The deeper question is whether the economic sovereignty of Kenya allows the people themselves to determine national priorities.
We reject any economic policy that places debt repayment, capital accumulation and the interests of imperialist finance above the social needs of the working people.
We demand a health financing system based upon the principle that healthcare is a social right and not a commodity.
We demand democratic popular oversight over public health expenditure.
We demand greater participation by health workers, patients and communities in determining the priorities of the public health system.
The transformation of the national health insurance system does not alter this fundamental question.
The question remains:
Who controls healthcare and in whose interests is it organised?
BUILD WORKERS’ AND PEOPLE’S ORGANISATION
The strike must become an opportunity to strengthen organisation across the working class.
CPMK therefore calls upon workers’ organisations, progressive trade unionists, students, youth organisations, community organisations and people’s movements to establish broad Workers’ and People’s Solidarity Committees in support of the nurses.
These committees should not exist merely to issue statements.
They should organise solidarity.
They should disseminate political education.
They should expose attempts to divide workers.
They should document repression and victimisation.
They should mobilise material support for striking workers and their families.
And above all, they should help connect the nurses’ struggle with the struggles of teachers, doctors, clinical officers, laboratory workers, industrial workers, transport workers, agricultural workers, informal workers and unemployed youth.
The struggle of one section of the working class must become the concern of the entire working class.
TOWARDS PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLIES
CPMK further calls for the development of People’s Assemblies at the community and sub county level as organs of popular discussion, political education, mobilisation and coordination.
These assemblies must emerge from the actual struggles and needs of the people.
They must discuss healthcare.
They must discuss unemployment.
They must discuss land.
They must discuss education.
They must discuss housing.
They must discuss taxation.
They must discuss debt and austerity.
They must discuss police repression.
They must discuss the political and economic system that produces these problems.
We do not declare that such assemblies are already organs of dual power.
Rather, we recognise that organised popular institutions can develop through struggle and, under definite political conditions, become instruments through which the working people increasingly exercise collective political authority.
Organisation creates power.
Conscious organisation creates class power.
FROM ONE STRIKE TO GENERAL WORKING CLASS ACTION
The nurses’ struggle must not remain isolated.
We therefore call upon all progressive trade unionists and working class organisations to begin discussing the possibility of coordinated industrial and political action whenever the conditions mature.
If the ruling authorities continue to refuse genuine negotiations, if workers continue to be victimised, and if the state continues to use coercion and bureaucratic mechanisms to suppress legitimate collective action, the working class must be prepared to escalate its resistance.
A General Strike cannot be proclaimed merely as a slogan.
It must be prepared through organisation.
It requires workplace structures.
It requires political education.
It requires solidarity networks.
It requires communication.
It requires material preparation.
It requires unity across sectors.
It requires the confidence of the working people that when one section moves, the others will not abandon it.
Preparation before action.
Organisation before escalation.
Unity before victory.
TO THE STRIKING NURSES
Comrades, you are not alone.
Your struggle belongs to the entire working class.
When a nurse refuses exploitation, the worker in the factory must listen.
When a nurse demands decent conditions, the teacher must listen.
When a nurse defends public healthcare, the peasant must listen.
When a nurse resists intimidation, the unemployed youth must listen.
And when workers in every sector begin to recognise that their struggles have a common enemy and a common historical interest, the foundations of genuine class unity begin to emerge.
Do not allow yourselves to be divided.
Do not allow temporary concessions to destroy collective organisation.
Do not allow individual negotiations to replace collective power.
The ruling class is organised.
The working class must organise more effectively.
The ruling class has institutions.
The working class must strengthen its own organisations of struggle.
The ruling class understands the importance of political power.
The working class must understand it too.
TO THE CPMK PARTY FRACTION
Comrades of the Party Fraction within KNUNM:
Hold the line.
Remain among the workers.
Listen.
Organise.
Educate.
Agitate.
Unite.
Do not substitute slogans for organisation.
Do not substitute rhetoric for mass work.
Do not substitute the Party for the workers.
Build the Party’s influence through patient work among the masses.
Turn every contradiction into an opportunity for political education.
Turn every setback into a lesson.
Turn every victory into greater organisation.
The struggle is not merely about winning one CBA.
The struggle is about developing the capacity of the working class to organise, resist and ultimately determine the direction of society.
THE ROAD AHEAD
The nurses have demonstrated an important truth.
The working people are not powerless.
They possess the power of collective labour.
They possess the power of organisation.
They possess the power of solidarity.
But power becomes transformative only when it becomes conscious, organised and politically directed.
Therefore, CPMK calls upon the entire working class and oppressed masses to rally behind the nurses.
Defend the immediate economic demands.
Strengthen the trade union struggle.
Build workers’ solidarity committees.
Develop People’s Assemblies.
Expand political education.
Unite the struggles of different sections of the working people.
Prepare the conditions for broader coordinated action.
And build the revolutionary political organisation capable of transforming resistance into political power.
As the African proverb teaches:
Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
The working class must therefore write its own history.
But more than writing history, the working class must make history.
SOLIDARITY WITH THE STRIKING NURSES!
DEFEND COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS!
DEFEND PUBLIC HEALTHCARE!
DOWN WITH AUSTERITY AND IMPERIALIST DOMINATION!
WORKERS OF KENYA, UNITE!
LONG LIVE THE UNITY OF THE WORKING CLASS!
LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE OF THE PEOPLE!
ALUTA CONTINUA!
VICTORY TO THE WORKING CLASS!
Comrade Booker Ngesa Omole
General Secretary
Communist Party Marxist Kenya (CPMK)