Labour Law In The Courts

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Canadian unions have scored a number of important Supreme Court victories, securing constitutional rights to picket, bargain collectively, and strike. Unions in Court documents the evolution of the Canadian labour movement’s engagement with the Charter, demonstrating how and why labour’s long-standing distrust of the legal system has given way to a controversial, Charter-based legal strategy. This book’s in-depth examination of constitutional labour rights will have critical implications for labour movements as well as activists in other fields.

Work on Trial is a collection of studies of eleven major cases and events that have helped to shape the legal landscape of work in Canada. Published in cooperation with the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History.

This book describes the labour and employment law governing employees of Parliament, employees of government agencies, members of the RCMP, and most direct employees of the government (excluding members of the Canadian armed forces, judges, and employees of Crown corporations).

It had been expected that the impact of the Superior Courts Bill - more particularly, the proposed merger of the Labour Court with the High Court and of the Labour Appeal Court with the Supreme Court of Appeal - on the dispute resolution system created by the Labour Relations Act would form a major focus of the revisions to this edition of Labour Relations Law. In the event, at the eleventh hour the Bill was again referred back for further consideration and, at the time of going to print, its final version is still being awaited. However, the most important changes proposed by the existing version of the Bill are included in the chapter on dispute resolution. Should these be implemented, it is hoped that the chapter will provide a concise but serviceable introduction to the new regime of labour litigation in the High Court as well as a guide to the existing system. In the area of substantive law developments have continued apace, fuelled by a number of important and sometimes controversial court decisions. Possibly the most important has been the continued evolution of common law rights and remedies alongside their statutory counterparts. This trend is in marked contrast to the position in the United Kingdom, the source of so much of our individual employment law, where the statutory regime is seen more clearly as having, in principle, superseded the common law regime. Although the phenomenon has thus far manifested itself most clearly in the area of termination of employment, there is no reason why contractual rights should not be asserted in competition with other statutory rights which do not abolish them expressly or by clear implication.

This book deals with six EU Member States analysing two areas of substantive law: transfer of undertakings and equality legislation.

Dignity, Alvin L. Goldman