Unions & the Political Economy & Labour Law & Strikes

Industrial Relation 201

As soon as there were unions in Canada, there were labour laws, and although it was long thought that these could be enacted by the federal government nationally, in 1925 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council determined that in the Canadian federal system it was the provinces which had such jurisdiction in a general sense, the jurisdiction of Parliament to enact labour law being limited to certain discrete, albeit major industries - e.g., banking, inter provincial and transportation. Prior to the advent of modern labour relations law, the process of collective bargaining was not legally enforceable. Trade unions enjoyed either no, or only limited, legal status and collective agreements were not recognized as contractually binding. The viability of collective bargaining rested solely on the economic strength of the parties and was often maintained by recourse to economic sanction. Workers used the strike for several purposes: as an instrument of persuasion to induce employers to recognize a trade union as their bargaining agent; as an instrument of negotiation to achieve desired terms and conditions of employment within a collective agreement; and as an instrument of relief to resolve disputes arising under a collective agreement once achieved. In this era, the industrial relations system was characterized by instability, labour unrest and widespread interference with production. (Godard, J. (2005). pp. 230-231).

Modern labour law provides greater stability and ensures more orderly production by regulating the strike, replacing its use as an instrument of persuasion by the process of certification; replacing its use as an instrument of relief by the process of arbitration; and restricting its use as an instrument of negotiation to a variety of timeliness requirements.

It was not until 1944 that a full national system of collective labour-relations law was established by the federal government, exercising its wartime emergency...