Partisanship, Globalization, and Canadian Labour Market Policy: Four Provinces in Comparative Perspective, by Rodney Haddow and Thomas Klassen, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006, 390 pp., ISBN-13: 978-0-802090-90-4 and ISBN-10: 0-802090-90-7 (original) (raw)
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For the first twenty-five years after the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted, it appeared that it would have little impact on Canadian labour laws. The Supreme Court of Canada took the view that the guarantee of freedom of association in the Charter did not include a right to strike and did not provide protection for collective bargaining. Common law rules regulating picketing did not come within the scope of the Charter’s rules on freedom of expression. Academic commentators were divided on whether this was a good or a bad thing, some espousing the hope that the Charter could be applied in pursuit of greater justice in the workplace while others were thankful that the courts were not interfering with legislative formulation of collective bargaining law and policy. Slowly, however, the courts have come to a different view of the Charter, finding that its values serve to provide protection for picketing, and in a sweeping revision of former jurisprudence in 2007 holding that the guarantee of freedom of association does provide protection for collective bargaining. This article describes the changing judicial views of the Charter through three distinct periods, each roughly a decade long: the formative period, the period of consolidation, and the period of re-assessment. It also traces some of the academic reaction to these developments. It concludes by an assessment of how trade unions are attempting to harness the changing view of the Charter to pursue a variety of challenges to the existing legislated collective bargaining schemes in Canada. In doing so, the paper uses the metaphor of the Charter as a cathedral, with the judges and academic commentators as artists painting a variety of views of the Cathedral. It is only through assessing the multiplicity of views that one can hope to achieve even a partial understanding of the Charter’s role in Canadian labour law. Pendant les vingt-cinq premières années qui ont suivi l’adoption de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés, il a semblé qu’elle n’aurait que peu d’incidences sur les lois canadiennes sur le travail. La Cour suprême du Canada estimait que la garantie de liberté d’association prévue dans la Charte ne couvrait pas le droit de faire la grève et n’offrait pas de protection pour la négociation collective. Les règles de common law en matière de piquetage n’étaient pas visées par les dispositions de la Charte sur la liberté d’expression. Les observateurs du milieu universitaire étaient partagés sur la question de savoir s’il s’agissait d’une bonne ou d’une mauvaise chose; certains exprimaient l’espoir que la Charte puisse être appliquée dans la poursuite d’une meilleure justice en milieu de travail, d’autres étaient simplement reconnaissants que les tribunaux ne s’immiscent pas dans la formulation par le pouvoir législatif des lois et des politiques en matière de négociation collective. Les tribunaux en sont toutefois lentement venus à adopter une opinion différente de la Charte et ont conclu que ses valeurs servent à offrir une protection pour le piquetage, et en 2007, s’écartant remarquablement de la jurisprudence existante, ils ont conclu que la garantie de liberté d’association confère une protection pour la négociation collective.Cet article décrit l’évolution de la jurisprudence en ce qui a trait à la Charte pendant trois périodes, chacune étant à peu près d’une décennie : la période formative, la période de consolidation et la période de réévaluation. Il y est aussi question de la réaction de certains auteurs et observateurs à ces développements. L’article conclut sur une évaluation de la façon dont les syndicats tentent de profiter du changement de point de vue sur la Charte pour poursuivre diverses contestations des régimes de négociation collective qui existent actuellement au Canada. Ce faisant, l’article considère métaphoriquement la Charte comme une cathédrale, les juges et les observateurs du milieu universitaire étant des artistes qui en peignent chacun une vue différente. Ce n’est qu’en procédant à un examen de la multiplicité de vues que l’on peut espérer comprendre, ne fût-ce que partiellement, le rôle de la Charte en droit canadien du travail.
2016
Cet article dkcrie la ligislation du gouvernement de la Colombie-Britannique qui fauorise la privatisa-tion des soins de santk (his 29 et 94) et fait retourner trente ans en arritre hs gains en kquitksalariale desf mmes qui travaillent duns les services de santk. Les auteures assurent qu hussitbt que les corporations multinationales de sew-ices sont bien installkes dans Ie secteur, les salairesplus bas et les bhe5cespour les employkes sans contrats deuiennent kz norme, auecle rksultatque lessakzires des femrnesduns certainssecteursddvolw a m hommes uont se dktkriorer, klargis-
Giving Notice to Neoliberalism. The Lessons of Health Care Unions' Resistance in Finland and Canada
Transform journal
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the broader international context of the nurses’ labor struggle, and to provide hope against the odds. After all, HEU, the Canadian Nurses’ Association first met with a fate much worse than that of the Finns, but in the end their struggle led to a major victory. By appealing to ILO, and then to the Supreme Court of Canada, the labor activists in Canada showed that resisting the worst excesses of corporate power is not only desirable but possible
The Struggle over Employee Benefits: The Role of Labor in Influencing Modern Health Policy
Milbank Quarterly, 2003
Health care policy has often been described as the work of political actors seeking to benefit the larger community or a particular group of individuals. In 20th-century America, those actors worked in a historical context shaped by demographic and political pressures created during a period of rapid industrial change. Whereas scholars have placed the emergence of European social welfare in such a larger frame, their analysis of movements for health insurance in the United States has largely ignored the need for a frame. If anything, their studies have focused on the lack of a radical political working-class movement in this country as an explanation for the absence of national or compulsory health insurance. Indeed, this absence has dominated analyses of the failure of health policy reform in this country, which generally ignore even these passing historical allusions to the role of class in shaping health policy. Explanations of why health care reform failed during the Clinton administration cited the lack of coverage for millions of Americans but rarely alluded to the active role of labor or other working-class groups in shaping the existing health care system.After organized labor failed to institute national health insurance in the mid-twentieth century, its influence on health care policy diminished even further. This article proposes an alternative interpretation of the development of health care policy in the United States, by examining the association of health policy with the relationships between employers and employees. The social welfare and health insurance systems that resulted were a direct outcome of the pressures brought by organized and unorganized labor movements. The greater dependency created by industrial and demographic changes, conflicts between labor and capital over the political meaning of disease and accidents, and attempts by the political system to mitigate the impending social crisis all helped determine new health policy options.
Medical History, Vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 203-222, 2011
Organised medicine in a number of advanced industrial countries resisted the post-war trend toward more state involvement in the funding and organisation of medical care. While there were eight doctors’ strikes during the peak of reform efforts in the 1960s, two of the most prolonged and bitter struggles took place in Canada and Belgium. This comparative analysis of the two strikes highlights the philosophy, motives, and strategies of organised medicine in resisting state-led reform efforts. Although historical and institutional contexts in the two countries differed, organised medicine in Canada and Belgium thought and responded in very similar ways to the perceived threat of medical insurance reform. While the perception of who won and who lost the respective doctors’ strikes differed, the ultimate impact on the trajectory of public healthcare on the medical profession was remarkably similar. In both countries, the strike would have a long-standing impact on future reform efforts, particularly efforts to reform physician remuneration in order to facilitate more effective primary healthcare.