Data-Labeling Workers in Nairobi Win a Wage Floor After a Year of Organizing

After thirteen months of organizing, workers at four Nairobi data-annotation firms have signed an agreement establishing a floor of KSh 310 per hour, a limit of 30 minutes per shift on unpaid quality review, and a formal appeals process for task rejections.

The rejection process was the sticking point. Annotators are typically paid per accepted task, and workers said rejection rates had climbed steadily without explanation — one organizer described a week in which 22% of her completed work was rejected by an automated quality gate with no stated reason and no way to contest it. Under the new agreement, rejections above 8% trigger a human review, and workers are paid for contested tasks pending the outcome.

"People think this work is typing," said Mercy Achieng, who spent two years labeling road-scene footage and helped lead the organizing effort. "It is watching a screen for nine hours and being told by a system you cannot talk to that four of those hours did not count."

The firms involved handle contracts for clients on three continents, and none would say publicly how the cost will be absorbed. The agreement covers roughly 3,400 workers — a fraction of the sector — but it establishes a reference point. Every subsequent negotiation in Nairobi now starts from a number that exists.