The employees had on June 28 threatened to go off air starting July 3 if the company had failed to clear outstanding salaries.
Standard Group employees from Radio Maisha, Spice FM, Berur FM and Vybez Radio on Thursday morning, July 4 downed their tools, making good their earlier threat to do so over salary arrears going as far back as June 2023.
The employees had on June 28 threatened to go off air starting July 3 if the company had failed to clear outstanding salaries.
The presenters, who host some of the most popular shows on stations under the media conglomerate, walked out of their studios, leaving their listeners listening only to music, demanding that the management honour their contractual obligation.
With management not heeding their plea, the journalists staged a walkout from their respective workstations and converged at the staff cafeteria.
Inside Spice FM studios at Standard Group. /FILE
Viral Tea was informed that the staffers had been at the cafeteria since 7 am waiting for the management to address their concerns.
According to the radio employees, they have not been paid for the months between June to August 2023. In 2024, the employees had allegedly only been paid for the month of February.
In their demand letter signed June 2024, the journalists had asked to be paid their June 2024 salary by Tuesday, July 2.
For the other months, the employees asked Standard Group to pay 30 per cent of the arrears every month until the amount is cleared in full.
“Kindly note that in the event of non-payment as proposed above, all programming will be off air on July 3, on all 4 radio stations until our plight is addressed and a commitment from your end is issued in writing,” the employees had earlier warned.
In response, the media house threatened to fire all radio presenters from the radio stations following the walkout, with the management addressing the journalists who had converged at the staff cafeteria, and threatened to terminate contracts should they not go back to their workstations.
Staff at the media house have been vocal about their plight, using organisations such as the Kenya Union of Journalists (KUJ) and the Media Council of Kenya (MCK) to air their grievances and demand immediate action from the management.
Even on their social media channels, many of the stations under the Standard Group umbrella did not have updates as is usual for presenters to drum up fans to tune in.
The media house based along Mombasa Road has been suffering economic challenges with frequent mass layoffs and retrenchments.
Meanwhile, Standard Group has another problem on its way after KUJ on Sunday, June 30 issued a 14-day strike notice to the Cabinet Secretary for Labour on its intentions to stage a work boycott should the company fail to meet four of its demands, a matter that could lead to a total shutdown of operations at the country’s oldest media house.
KUJ had demanded that the media house based along Mombasa Road settle salary arrears owed to its staff, some of whom have reportedly gone unpaid for more than seven months.
The union also called on the company to devise a concrete plan to restore the Sacco by providing Sacco savings contributed by its employees.
This is after it accused Standard Group of defying a directive from Sacco’s regulator, The Sacco Societies Regulatory (SASRA), to prioritise this matter in its debt-settling plan.
KUJ also called upon the company to remove a cap on medical claims and cease capturing the biometric data of staff to enforce a new directive of reporting time.
Standard Group was also compelled to come up with an acceptable payment plan to clear the arrears, failure to which the staff will not only withdraw their services but also begin auctioning prime assets of the company to recover the funds.
