Industrail Conflict

Chapter 8: Industrial Conflict

8:100 Social Significance and Policy Perspectives

8:110 INDUSTRIAL PLURALISM AND INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT

As we have seen in the preceding chapter, labour boards have increasingly regulated the bargaining process in recent years. Nevertheless, under general labour relations legislation everywhere in Canada, the ultimate means of dispute resolution is the use of economic sanctions. Thus, the ability to maintain or withstand a work stoppage remains central to collective bargaining. If a union cannot win a strike or lockout, it will probably not get a favourable agreement, and it might not get an agreement at all. In the end, though, only a small minority of bargaining rounds actually lead to strikes or lockouts. For example, between 1990-1998, only 3 percent of public sector and 9.5 percent of private sector negotiations for major collective agreements resulted in a work stoppage.

Although the prospect of economic sanctions is generally considered to be a crucial part of the bargaining process, a primary factor driving the evolution of Canadian labour law has been a desire to limit what are seen as the detrimental effects of strikes. The earliest efforts at labour regulation in Canada involved a unitary approach which tended simply to repress strikes, leaving employees unable to withdraw their labour collectively. When this approach proved incapable of containing industrial unrest, Canadian governments (from the late 1800s on) began to move toward a pluralist approach, relying more on dialogue and accommodation as the principal road to industrial peace.

Over the years, this pluralist approach has come to predominate in Canadian public policy. Negotiation and compromise are encouraged, while repression is used more sparingly, in the background. Employers are required to recognize and bargain with certified bargaining agents, and recourse to economic sanctions is hedged about with a set of legal restrictions. On...