Mombasa | 22 July 2025
The Communist Party Marxist Kenya (CPMK), in alliance with the Warehouse Workers Committee, today led a renewed wave of industrial strike action in the Shimanzi and Changamwe areas of Mombasa. This escalation; under the resolute leadership of National Chairperson Comrade Mwaivu Kaluka and Workers’ Committee General Secretary Comrade Baraza Wechuli; marks a continuation of the February strike, which was violently repressed by state security forces, leaving several workers severely injured.
The current action reaffirms the workers’ unbroken will to fight in the face of capitalist brutality and police repression. It is rooted in the employers’ ongoing refusal to honour the existing Collective Bargaining Agreement, and their open defiance of a court order from the Employment and Labour Relations Court, served on 1st July 2025, which had given a three-week grace period for implementation of new wage rates.
Instead of compliance, the employers — in collusion with the Office of the OCPD and OCS of Makupa Police Station — have manufactured a fraudulent notice of new wage rates, in direct violation of the Labour Relations Act. Today, just like in February, peaceful workers were once again met with state violence. Police were deployed to warehouse gates, lobbing tear gas and firing live bullets at unarmed demonstrators. Their only crime: demanding fair pay, protective gear for handling poisonous goods like fertilisers, and access to sanitary working conditions.
This confirms what the Party has long held: the Kenyan state, its courts, and its police serve the interests of capital; not the working masses. The police are not neutral. They are the loyal foot soldiers of a comprador elite terrified of a conscious, organised, and militant working class.
But the workers have had enough. Today they declared a complete shutdown of warehouse operations across the city until all demands are met. The warehouses will not move, the port will not flow, and business will not continue as usual. This is the power of a united working class, backed by its revolutionary vanguard.
CPMK fully supports the workers’ core demands:
Full enforcement of the legally binding Collective Bargaining Agreement;
Immediate implementation of the July 1st court order;
Provision of protective gear and sanitary working conditions;
An end to police violence and employer collusion.
To the workers of Kenya, let today’s events be a call to arms: the power is in your hands; but only when you are united, organised, and led by a revolutionary Party that serves your class interests without apology or compromise.
To the ruling class: we warn you. You may break a single broomstick, but you cannot break a bundle. You may beat a worker, but you cannot beat the working class.
We repeat:
Wafanyi kazi, nyakua mashamba – Nyakua!
Wafanyi kazi, komboa chakula – Komboa!
Wafanyi kazi, pigania uhuru – Pigania!
Down with capitalist exploitation!
Down with police repression!
Long live the warehouse workers of Mombasa!
Long live the Communist Party Marxist Kenya!
Booker N. Omole
General Secretary
Communist Party Marxist Kenya (CPMK)