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Full-Text Articles in Labor and Employment Law
The Faces Of Coercion: The Legal Regulation Of Labor Conflict In Ontario, 1880-1889, Eric Tucker
The Faces Of Coercion: The Legal Regulation Of Labor Conflict In Ontario, 1880-1889, Eric Tucker
Eric M. Tucker
This article is part of a larger study of Canadian labor law before the advent of statutory collective bargaining, which questions the traditional periodization and the meanings of the categories. It is often an un-articulated premise that the exercise by employers of their superior economic power, as imparted and structured through the law of property and contract, is not coercion. Rather, the analysis is restricted to direct state coercion, exercised through the criminal law, the police, and the injunction. This framework produces a partial view of the role of law and interferes with an analysis of the strategic choices made …
Industry And Humanity Revisited: Everything Old Is New Again: Review Of Paul C. Weiler, Governing The Workplace, Eric Tucker
Industry And Humanity Revisited: Everything Old Is New Again: Review Of Paul C. Weiler, Governing The Workplace, Eric Tucker
Eric M. Tucker
The decline of American unionism is now a well-documented phenomenon. Its causes and consequences, however, remain the subject of intense debate. Regardless of one’s view of this development, it clearly poses a challenge to the traditional techniques for the legal regulation of the employment relationship, and especially for state-sponsored collective bargaining which has been the centerpiece of American labour policy since the enactment of the Wagner Act in 1935. It is this crisis in American labour and employment law which Paul C. Weiler seeks to address in his new book, “Governing the Workplace: The Future of Labor and Employment Law”. …
"That Indefinite Area Of Toleration": Criminal Conspiracy And Trade Unions In Ontario, 1837-77, Eric Tucker
"That Indefinite Area Of Toleration": Criminal Conspiracy And Trade Unions In Ontario, 1837-77, Eric Tucker
Eric M. Tucker
During the first three quarters of the nineteenth century, the question of whether trade unions in Ontario were criminal conspiracies under common law was never clearly determined. By examining the development and interaction of the legal and social zones of toleration we can illuminate how law was shaped by and shaped early struggles between workers and employers. The statutory reforms of 1872 clearly defined a narrow zone of legal toleration in which trade unions were accepted as labour market organizations while the means they could to pursue their objectives were restricted. The contours of industrial legality which began to emerge …
Worker Health And Safety Struggles: Democratic Possibilities And Constraints, Eric Tucker
Worker Health And Safety Struggles: Democratic Possibilities And Constraints, Eric Tucker
Eric M. Tucker
The central point of this article, written in 1995, was that health and safety struggles can be at the vanguard of challenges to a legal social order that tolerates poor labour standards and high levels of worker exploitation. Workers who fear their work is making them sick or subjecting them to high levels of injury and disablement know first-hand that the values of democracy, autonomy, equality and community are denied and not realized by current arrangements. By drawing on that experience and explicitly linking health and safety demands to an alternative vision of social justice, one in which workers enjoy …
Renorming Labour Law: Can We Escape Labour Law's Recurring Regulatory Dilemmas?, Eric Tucker
Renorming Labour Law: Can We Escape Labour Law's Recurring Regulatory Dilemmas?, Eric Tucker
Eric M. Tucker
Historically, protective labour law pushed back against capitalist labour markets by facilitating workers’ collective action and setting minimum employment standards based on social norms. Although the possibilities, limits and desirability of such a project were viewed differently in classical, Marxist and pluralist political economy, each perspective understood that the pursuit of protective labour law would produce recurring regulatory dilemmas requiring trade-offs between efficiency, equity and voice and/or between workers’ and employers’ interests. Recently, some scholars have argued that labour law needs to be renormed in ways that are market constituting rather than market constraining, and that this change would avoid …
Employee Or Independent Contractor?: Charting The Legal Significance Of The Distinction In Canada, Judy Fudge, Eric Tucker, Leah Vosko
Employee Or Independent Contractor?: Charting The Legal Significance Of The Distinction In Canada, Judy Fudge, Eric Tucker, Leah Vosko
Eric M. Tucker
The distinction between employees and independent contractors is crucial in determining the scope of application of labour and employment legislation in Canada, since the self-employed are, for the most part, treated as entrepreneurs who do not require the statutory protections accorded to employees. Yet statistics indicate that most self-employed people resemble employees more than entrepreneurs, in the sense that they are economically dependent on the sale of their labor and are often subject to inferior terms and conditions of work. Using four Canadian jurisdictions as a basis for this comparison, the authors demonstrate that there are wide variations in the …
Changing Boundaries Of Employment: Developing A New Platform For Labour Law, Judy Fudge, Eric Tucker, Leah Vosko
Changing Boundaries Of Employment: Developing A New Platform For Labour Law, Judy Fudge, Eric Tucker, Leah Vosko
Eric M. Tucker
In this paper, the authors consider whether the contract of employment should continue to be the central platform for delivering employment- related rights and benefits, such as access to labour standards and collective bargaining legislation. Labour market analysis has traditionally distinguished between employment and self-employment on the basis of a dichotomy between subordination and autonomy. whereas employees subordinate themselves to their employer in exchange for income and job security, the self-employed forego these benefits in order to gain autonomy and control over the means of their own production. This distinction is reflected in, and reinforced by, the boundary drawn in …
Making The Workplace 'Safe' In Capitalism: The Enforcement Of Factory Legislation In Nineteenth Century Ontario, Eric Tucker
Making The Workplace 'Safe' In Capitalism: The Enforcement Of Factory Legislation In Nineteenth Century Ontario, Eric Tucker
Eric M. Tucker
The development of industrial capitalism in the second half of the nineteenth century in Ontario brought new and more serious hazards into the workplace and drew women and children into the waged labour force. As a result of working class lobbying and the efforts of middle class reformers, the state empowered itself to regulate health and safety conditions in factories and to protect child and female labour. The implementation of these regulations was left to an inspectorate which was armed with substantial legal powers to enforce the law. These powers were rarely invoked by the inspectors. However, the failure to …
Worker Participation In Health And Safety Regulation: Lessons From Sweden, Eric Tucker
Worker Participation In Health And Safety Regulation: Lessons From Sweden, Eric Tucker
Eric M. Tucker
The toll capitalist production takes on the lives and health of workers has been, and continues to be one of its least acceptable features. For this reason, the labour movement and political parties seeking labour's support have often made reform of occupational health and safety regulation a major objective. In recent years, for example, the New Democratic Party in Ontario has vociferously criticized the failures of the governments of the day to protect adequately the workers in the province. Their recent electoral success provides a great opportunity to improve the work environment and to strengthen the ability of the labour …
Pluralism Or Fragmentation?: The Twentieth-Century Employment Law Regime In Canada, Judy Fudge, Eric Tucker
Pluralism Or Fragmentation?: The Twentieth-Century Employment Law Regime In Canada, Judy Fudge, Eric Tucker
Eric M. Tucker
In 1947, Bora Laskin, the doyen of Canadian collective bargaining law, remarked that "Labour relations as a matter for legal study... has outgrown any confinement to a section of the law of torts or to a corner of the criminal law. Similarly, and from another standpoint, it has burst the narrow bounds of master and servant." That standpoint was liberal pluralism, which comprises collective bargaining legislation administered by independent labour boards and a system of grievance arbitration to enforce collective agreements. After World War II, it came to dominate our understanding of labour relations law such that, according to Laskin, …
The Determination Of Occupational Health And Safety Standards In Ontario 1860-1982: From Markets To Politics To...?, Eric Tucker
The Determination Of Occupational Health And Safety Standards In Ontario 1860-1982: From Markets To Politics To...?, Eric Tucker
Eric M. Tucker
The author reviews the historical development of the decision-making frameworks within which courts and the Legislature have made choices regarding the allocation of risks to health and safety in the workplace. Arguing that this development has been conditioned by the necessity of satisfying in a capitalist democracy conflicting demands to facilitate capital accumulation and to justify to the electorate the manner in which choices regarding the structure of the processes of production have been made, the author contends that recent pressure to adopt cost-benefit analysis to satisfy the demands of legitimation and accumulation, and challenges its adequacy as a normative …