Comparative employee relations Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Comparative employee relations - Case Study Example On top of this, the expanding industrial society was drawing more children, women, immigrants as well as rural workers in to the urban culture. This pool of semi skilled labor as well as unskilled labor started to organize themselves in small groups in order to articulate their plight collectively. This marked the onset of trade unionism. The political dimensions or political orientations of trade unions have always been determined by the nature and type of political regimes existent in their economies all over the world. Due to this reason, many trade unions especially in former colonial states ended up forming themselves into political parties. In other democracies these trade unions concentrated only in their field of specialization and only rarely did they form themselves into political parties. The rise of trade unionism in Britain could be best analyzed on a modernization theory perspective. On the other hand, in order to understand the rise of trade unionism in Kenya, which happens to be a former British colony can only be best understood from a dependency theory perspective. Trade unions both in Britain and in Kenya have a long history of getting overly involved in political affairs. Surprisingly in both countries, there are instances where certain trade unions have turned into political parties and contested for national elections. Trade unions in Kenya have always had a political dimension ever since the struggle for independence from Britain began. Many trade unions were on the front line in advocating for the release of detained freedom fighters and ever since, they have always been very political. Trade unions in both countries have been highly involved in political campaigns, especially for political parties that they consider to be of importance to them. The British labor union was one of the driving forces of bringing the labor party to power. Likewise, the Kenya federation of labor was supportive of bringing the current NARC regime in to power in Kenya. Additionally these trade unions have always been keen on criticizing bad legislation or poor government policies in all sectors of the economy. In almost all countries of the world there is no country where trade unions have failed to conflict with the ruling regimes. This is in no exception to trade unions in Britain and Kenya. Kenya having been a former colony of Britain and given the fact that it is still a member of the commonwealth countries it shares a lot in common with not only Britain but with almost all of the commonweal