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Law of Work Archive

PM Trudeau's Mandate Letter to Minister of Labour Promises to Repeal Antiunion Law

by David Doorey December 8, 2015
written by David Doorey December 8, 2015

December 8, 2016

Labour law history teaches us that partisan or ideologically driven laws that shift the balance of power too far in favour of employers or unions rarely survive the government that enacted them.  And so it comes as little surprise that the federal Liberals have announced their intention to repeal Bill C-377, an antiunion, ideologically driven labour law disguised as a tax law.
Bill C-377 would have required unions to regularly prepare and submit reams of documents accounting for how they spend their money and their time, information

PMO's Mandate to Labour Minister

PMO’s Mandate to Labour Minister


that would then be posted on a government website.  The objective was bury unions in red tape, arm employers with information about union’s finances, and provide an opportunity to anti-union advocacy organizations to scour the reports in search of any morsel of information that could be used to embarrass unions.
The regulation of the relationship between unions and union members falls within provincial jurisdiction in Canada, and every province has some sort of law regulating what information must be provided by unions to the their members.  However, the Conservatives argued that Bill C-377 was really a tax law (federal).  Conservatives argued that organizations that receive special tax benefits must account to ‘taxpayers’ for how they spend their money.  Fair enough. Yet Bill C-337 applied only to unions, and not to any other organization that also receives special tax treatment, such as charities, professional organizations, or corporations.  The majority Conservatives could offer no explanation for this glaring contradiction. The obvious hyper-partisan nature of the Bill provoked a highly unusual backlash by both Liberals and (some) Conservative Senators that initially stalled the passage of the law.
The Liberals promised to repeal Bill C-377 if elected, and now they have reaffirmed their commitment to do so.  That commitment appears in the Mandate Letter sent from the PMO’s office to the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour.
Here is that letter.
The Mandate Letter also notes that the government will be repealing Bill C-525, another Conservative law that changed the manner through which unions in the federal jurisdiction become certified and de-certified.  That law followed the lead of Conservative governments across the country in repealing the traditional Canadian approach to proving majority support based on the collection of union membership cards on behalf of a majority of employees.  Instead of this card-check system, Bill C-525 would have introduced a two-step process involving both the collection of cards, and then a second requirement for the union to win a vote.   Academic studies demonstrate that union success rates in organizing new units falls when the model switches from card-check to mandatory vote.
The Mandate Letter also suggests that changes are coming to the Employment Insurance Act to “better align” the legislation “with the realities of today’s labour market”.   We will have to see what this means, keeping in mind that the path to the dismantling of the unemployment insurance regime in Canada began in earnest in 1996 under a Liberal government (as explained in Chapter 30 Regulating Unemployment in my book The Law of Work) with reforms designed to reduce both the level of benefits and access to benefits, and expand the circumstances in which unemployed workers would be disqualified from benefits.  The Conservatives continued along that path during their reign.
There are also some interesting references in the Mandate Letter to changes in access to youth training and possible reforms to the Canada Labour Code to allow “flexible work arrangements”.    “Flexibility” always sounds nice, but it is also often code for giving employers more discretion to alter working hours and avoid overtime pay.  On this point, see my York colleague Mark Thomas’ great little book Regulating Flexibility, which explores how the Mike Harris Conservative government in Ontario dismantled employment standards protections in the 1990s in the name of so-called ‘flexibility’.   So again, we will have to see how these vague promises translate into legislative reform.

The Law of Work Cross-Reference  

Chapter 30 –  Regulating Unemployment

Part IV (due 2016):  The Collective Bargaining Regime

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David Doorey

Professor Doorey is an Associate Professor of Work Law and Industrial Relations at York University. He is the Director of the School of HRM at York and Director of Osgoode Hall Law School’s executive LLM Program in Labour and Employment Law and on the Advisory Board of the Osgoode Certificate program in Labour Law. He is a Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program and a member of the International Advisory Committee on Harvard University’s Clean Slate Project, which is re-imaging labor law for the 21st century

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17 Mar

New on @CanLawWorkForum from Prof David Doorey (@TheLawofWork)

#Uber #WorkerClassification #EmpLaw

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Lots of chatter about Uber announcing it will kind of, sort of treat drivers as "workers" in the UK.

How does the UK's "worker" category compare to Canada's "dependent contractor" status? Some thoughts in my new post here on @CanLawWorkForum:

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Good day to reflect back on this recent timely post explaining the PRO Act that would dramatically alter U.S. labor law.

For labor law students:

What changes in the PRO Act are already law in all or parts of Canada?

David J. Doorey@TheLawofWork

A primer for Canadians by ⁦@Harvard_Law⁩’s Jonathan Levitan on what is contained in the U.S. Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO Act) which recently passed in the House south of the border.

(From ⁦@CanLawWorkForum⁩) https://lawofwork.ca/amp/bidenagenda

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RSandillRicha Sandill@RSandill·
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@SCLSclinic and I were so fortunate to represent this client last year. I am thrilled that this decision brings more clarity for family status accommodations rights amidst a pandemic that has tested parents, caregivers, and families like never before. https://twitter.com/CanLawWorkForum/status/1364605259071561730

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New from @RSandill (counsel for applicant), discussing important new "family status" discrimination decision from OHRT:

"Kovintharajah v. Paragon Linen & Laundry: When Failure to Accommodate Child Care Needs is “Family Status” Discrimination"

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