Labor Law in Kenya

992 Words4 Pages
QUESTION THREE Critically discuss and evaluate the role of labour institutions in Kenya in the development of labor law and policy in the country. Are there any suggestions you can make for reforms to strengthen their role in the Labour market in Kenya? (10 marks) The performance of the labour market is the most obvious outward sign of the quality of economic and social development. The labour market’s ability to absorb the economically active population, underpin a reasonable degree of social mobility, provide acceptable wages, working hours, employment stability, labour rights, contracts and union organization, as well as offer protection for the unemployed and retired population, are all key pieces in the puzzle of social cohesion. The labour market also needs to be able to do these things in order to promote a type of economic growth that can impact more positively on the distribution of income and employment. These achievements, however, are not a natural result of market forces, but depend on appropriate public policy decisions. Labour market outcomes are not driven by individual characteristics alone, however, but also by the way that market works, determined, in turn, by the production structure, development policies and the fabric of labour institutions. This fabric, which is made up of market regulations, legal provisions and collectively negotiated rules, arose chiefly as a result of another structural inequality: that between workers and business owners, which has grown sharper since the 1980s. In recognition of this and often as a result of social conflicts over the rights of workers as the structurally weaker actors in the labour market, regulations (such as restrictions on the length of the working day) had been introduced as far back as the nineteenth century to protect labour rights and to limit the scope of self-regulation by the market. The
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