The New Brunswick Superior Court has struck down the exclusion of casual workers from the public sector collective bargaining statute as a violation of the casual workers’ Section 2(d) Charter right to collective bargaining.
This is another fallen domino in the ongoing re-defining of Section 2(d), following on the heals of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Dunmore and B.C. Health Services and the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision in Fraser. All of these decisions ruled that a government violates the Charter when it passes laws that ‘substantially interfere’ with the ability of workers to exercise their freedom to associate. Those freedoms include the right to join and form unions and to engage in collective bargaining (and, accoring to the Ontario Court of Appeal, to access some form of dispute resolution when bargaining does not lead to an agreement).
In this latest case, the Court ruled that casual workers were a vulnerable group and that their exlcusion from the protective legislation rendered it virtually impossible for them to exercise their Charter rights. The New Brunswick government was given 12 months to bring the legislation into compliance with the Charter.
Here is a nice summary of the decision by Lancaster House Publishing.
New Brunswick Government Violates Charter Right of Casual Workers to Collective Bargaining
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