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Employment Relationships and Economic Development — the Kenyan Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

Until the late 1950s it was conventional wisdom in East Africa that the major problem of manpower development was one of attracting and retaining sufficient numbers of workers into the European-controlled labour force. Strategies, however, differed radically between plantation agriculture and industry. In Kenya the Government published two reports in 1955 on wages which well illustrate the contrast, and provide valuable insight into the interests involved in the formation of employment policies in a colonial economy.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

Page 559 note 1 See Northcott, C. H. (ed.), African Labour Efficiency Survey (London, 1949),Google Scholar and Report of the East Africa Royal Commission, 1953–55 (London, 1955), Cmd. 9475.Google Scholar

Page 559 note 2 International Labour Organisation, Employment, Incomes and Equality: a strategy for increasing productive employment in Kenya (Geneva, 1972), p. 100,Google Scholar hereinafter referred to as the I.L.O. Mission report.

Page 559 note 3 Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, Report of the Rural Wages Committee (Nairobi, 1955).Google Scholar

Page 559 note 4 van Zwanenberg, Roger, The Agricultural History of Kenya (Nairobi, 1972), pp. 3247.Google Scholar

Page 560 note 1 Lugard, Lord, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (London, 1922), p. 419.Google Scholar

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Page 560 note 4 Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, Report of the Committee on African Wages (Nairobi, 1955).Google Scholar

Page 561 note 1 Cf. Schon, Donald, ‘Reith Lectures’, in The Listener (London), 17 12 1970, p. 836.Google Scholar

Page 561 note 2 Kenya Statistical Abstracts (Nairobi), 19551956,Google Scholar quoted by Weeks, loc. cit.

Page 561 note 3 Amsden, Alice H., International Firms and Labour in Kenya, 1945–1970 (London, 1971), pp. 6370.Google Scholar

Page 562 note 1 Ibid. p. 68.

Page 562 note 2 Swynnerton, R. J. M., A Plan to Intensify the Development of African Agriculture in Kenya (Nairobi, 1954).Google Scholar

Page 562 note 3 Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, and Water Resources, African Land Development in Kenya, 1946–1962 (Nairobi, 1964).Google Scholar

Page 562 note 4 Ibid.

Page 563 note 1 Report of the Commission of Inquiry (Public Service Structure and Renumeration), 1970–71 (Nairobi, 1971),Google Scholar hereinafter referred to as the Ndegwa Commission report.

Page 563 note 2 Ahmed Mohiddin, ‘Notes on the Colonial Background of Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965’, Eighth Annual Conference of the East African Universities Social Science Council, Nairobi, 1972.

Page 563 note 3 I.L.O. Mission report, p. 89.

Page 564 note 1 Hunter, Guy, ‘Employment Policy in Tropical Africa’, in The International Labour Review, 103, I, 1972, pp. 3557.Google Scholar

Page 564 note 2 Richard Jolly and Christopher Colclough, ‘African Manpower Plans’, ibid. 103, 6, 1972, pp. 207–64.

Page 564 note 3 African Socialism and Its Application to Planning in Kenya (Nairobi, 1965), Sessional Paper No. 10.Google Scholar

Page 564 note 4 Quoted by Mohiddin, op. cit. p. 1.

Page 565 note 1 Ibid. p. 2.

Page 565 note 2 Ibid. p. 25.

Page 565 note 3 I.L.O. Mission report, p. 96.

Page 565 note 4 Nellis, John R., ‘Is the Kenyan Bureaucracy Developmental?’, Staff Paper No. 103,Google Scholar Institute for Development Studies, Nairobi, 1971.

Page 566 note 1 I.L.O. Mission report, Technical Paper No. 22, pp. 502–8.

Page 567 note 1 Cf. Wallace, Tina, ‘Working in Rural Buganda: a study of the occupational activities of young people in rural villages’, Eighth Annual Conference of the E.A.U.S.S.C., Nairobi, 1972.Google Scholar

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Page 571 note 1 Ibid. p. III.

Page 571 note 2 Ibid. p. 113.

Page 572 note 1 For example, the Meat Processing Company pays for a coffin and for the transportation of bodies of employees who die at work to their home area.

Page 572 note 2 Observation on the Report of and Economic Survey Mission for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (Nairobi. 1963), Sessional Paper No. 1, p. 10.Google Scholar

Page 573 note 1 Ndegwa Commission report, para. 106.

Page 574 note 1 Source: Economic Survey, 1972 (Nairobi, 1972).Google Scholar

Page 574 note 2 Report of East African Industrial Court Ruling in The East African Standard (Nairobi). 9 02 1973.Google Scholar

Page 574 note 3 Report of the Salaries and Terms of Service Review Commission, 1971–72 (Nairobi, 1972).Google Scholar

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Page 574 note 5 Nellis, op. cit. p. 3.

Page 575 note 1 Lindblom, Charles E., ‘The Science of Muddling Through’, in Public Administration Review (Chicago), XIX, 1959, pp. 7888.Google Scholar For a fuller statement of the ‘consensus through bargaining’ approach, see also The Intelligence of Democracy (Glencoe, 1965).Google Scholar

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Page 575 note 3 Ndegwa Commission report, para. 90.

Page 576 note 1 Tignor, Robert L., ‘Colonial Chiefs in Chiefless Societies’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, IX, 3, 10 1971, pp. 339–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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Page 577 note 1 Ibid. para. 14.

Page 578 note 1 Singer, Hans, ‘Data on Labour Turnover of a Number of Major Manufacturing Concerns in Kenya’, Nairobi, 1972.Google Scholar

Page 580 note 1 Source: Current research in Kenya, 1972–3. To preserve anonymity the collective agreements are not specified.

Page 581 note 1 The Industrial Court of Kenya, Cause No. 24 of 1972: ‘Kenya Union of Sugar Plantation Workers and Sugar Employers’ Group of the Federation of Kenya Employers’.

Page 582 note 1 Tom S. Weisner, ‘One Family Two Households: a rural–urban network model of urbanism’, Fifth Annual Conference of the U.E.A.S.S.C., Nairobi, 1969. See also Walter Elkan, ‘Is a Proletariat Emerging in Nairobi?’, Eighth Annual Conference of the U.E.A.S.S.C., Nairobi, 1972.

Page 582 note 2 George E. Johnson and W. E. Whitelaw, ‘Rural–Urban Income Transfers: an estimated remittances function’, Discussion Paper No. 137, Institute for Development Studies, Nairobi, 1972.

Page 582 note 3 The Kenya educational system is regressive in the sense that higher education is free whilst primary education is not. As a proportion of cash income, primary school fees are high for manual workers. Gary S. Fields estimates that they represent about 12 per cent of average income per capita for one child; ‘The Educational System of Kenya: an economist’ view', Discussion Paper No. 103, Institute for Development Studies, Nairobi, 1971.

Page 583 note 1 Current research, Nyanza. Western Kenya, 1972.

Page 584 note 1 Greaves, Michael J., ‘The Kenyan Managers’, in The Daily Nation (Nairobi), 15 09 1972.Google Scholar

Page 587 note 1 Rodgers, R. E. and Mboko, Odworu, ‘Bureaucracy and Modernisation in Uganda’, University of Alberta, 1972.Google Scholar

Page 587 note 2 Quoted by Atieno-Odhiambo, E. S. in ‘The Song of the Vultures’, in The Journal of Eastern African Research and Development (Nairobi), I, 2, 1971, p. III.Google Scholar

Page 588 note 1 Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth (New York, 1968 edn.), p. 35.Google Scholar

Page 588 note 2 See, for example, Gouldner, Alvin, Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy (London, 1955), p. 172–4.Google Scholar