I’m out of town next week, and then I immediately cart off to Western for my panel discussion on the “Future of the Wagner Act”. So I won’t be blogging much before then. I’m busy trying to figure out what the future of labour law is!
Here is a reminder of the Conference, sponsored by UWO Law and law firms Heenan Blaikie and Koskie Minsky.
The theme of the 2012 lecture/conference will be Faultlines and Borderlines in Labo(u)r Law: The Future of the Wagner Act in Canada and the United States. This is a joint project of the UWO Faculty of Law, Koskie Minsky, Heenan Blaikie, and the Canada-US Institute at Western.
On Friday, 2 March 2012, Ms. Wilma Liebman, the former Chair of the National Labor Relations Board, will be delivering the seventh Koskie Minsky University Lecture in Labour Law. She was appointed Chair of the NLRB by President Obama as one of his first acts after assuming office in January 2009. The title of her Lecture will be: Labor Law, Economic Justice and Political Rhetoric: Reflections on the Wagner Act.
And the following day, Heenan Blaikie LLP and the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario will be hosting the full-day conference. There will be four panels, on the themes of human rights in the workplace, the role of trade and investment in shaping labour law, the crisis in public sector collective bargaining, and the future of the Wagner Act, with distinguished speakers from both sides of the 49th parallel on each panel. With unionization at 29% in Canada, and 12% in the United States, this conference will assess the viability of the Wagner Act and its ability to continue to promote industrial fairness.
The conference will conclude with a Saturday evening dinner, with the Honourable Lisa Raitt, Federal Minister of Labour as the guest speaker. I’m not sure if that dinner is open so ask the organizers if you are considering coming.
Here is the flyer.
I’m speaking on the last panel on Saturday, with Paul Secunda (Marquette) and John Goddard (Manitoba). See you in London!