Kenya’s Court of Appeal has ruled that county health workers kept on repeated short term contracts for years must be treated as permanent and pensionable staff, delivering a judgment that could reshape how public and private employers across the country classify casual labour.
The three judge bench sitting in Nyeri, comprising Justices S. ole Kantai, Joyce Lesiit and Fatuma Sichale Ali-Aroni, delivered the ruling on July 24, 2026 in Civil Appeal No. 178 of 2020, Kenya County Government Workers’ Union versus Embu County Government and the Embu County Government Public Service Board.
Legal analysts reviewing the decision noted that its effect is broad: workers kept on repeated short term arrangements for long stretches, or labelled casual while doing permanent work, may now claim protections under Section 37 of the Employment Act and Article 41 of the Constitution.
What the Court Found
The appeal centred on health workers originally engaged by the national government through the Ministry of Health and the Hospital Management Board in Embu, whose contracts and liabilities passed to the county government after devolution under the 2010 Constitution. The union had petitioned the Employment and Labour Relations Court in 2019, seeking a declaration that the county violated members’ right to fair labour practices, an order converting their casual status to permanent and pensionable terms, and a finding of unlawful pay discrimination.
The ELRC dismissed that petition in June 2020, a decision the Court of Appeal has now overturned entirely. Business Daily reported that the lower court had gone so far as to call the constitutional petition a complete waste of judicial resources. The appellate judges disagreed sharply, finding that the trial judge fell into error by failing to examine the true nature of the employment relationship and by suggesting the workers should have raised their grievances through a shop floor union representative rather than the courts, when the petition squarely raised constitutional questions within the ELRC’s own jurisdiction.
In its ruling, the court declared that the respondents violated the workers’ rights to fair labour practices and that their employment was never truly casual. As the judgment states, the employment relationship between the appellant’s members and respondents is not casual or temporary or based on any contract of service, but is permanent and pensionable. The court ordered Embu County to regularise the workers’ terms and conditions immediately and awarded costs of both the original petition and the appeal to the union. Judges rejected the discrimination and unequal pay claims, however, finding the union had not produced sufficient evidence to support them.
The Law Behind the Ruling
The judgment turns on Section 37 of the Employment Act, which sets out when a casual arrangement stops being casual in the eyes of the law. A worker converts automatically to term employment once they work a continuous month, or once their duties are of a kind that cannot reasonably be finished within three months. Once that threshold is crossed, the law treats the worker as though they had never been hired casually at all, entitling them to leave, notice, medical cover and other benefits that come with an ordinary contract.
Kenyan courts have leaned on that provision before. In Josephat Ndirangu v Henkel Chemicals, judges found that repeated renewals of short term contracts created a legitimate expectation of continued employment, and the Employment and Labour Relations Court has continued building on that reasoning, warning that public sector employers in particular should not lean on short fixed term contracts to casualise what are really permanent roles.
The Court of Appeal’s reasoning also echoes global labour standards. The International Labour Organization has long flagged casual and other non standard work arrangements as carrying greater decent work deficits than fixed term contracts, and has urged governments to close regulatory gaps that let employers use contractual labels to avoid the obligations that come with a genuine employment relationship. Kenya’s ruling puts that principle into hard law: substance beats paperwork.
Why It Matters Beyond Embu
For thousands of Kenyan workers cycling through renewed short term or casual contracts in county governments, hospitals and other institutions, the ruling offers a clear legal test. Length of service and the true nature of the work now count for more than what the contract calls the arrangement. Employers who have relied on rolling casual terms to avoid pension contributions, leave entitlements and job security face fresh exposure to similar claims, and unions now have a Court of Appeal precedent to point to when pressing employers to convert long serving casual staff.
