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Labor and Employment Law

Eric M. Tucker

Selected Works

Collective bargaining--Law and legislation

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Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Law

"Great Expectations" Defeated?: The Trajectory Of Collective Bargaining Regimes In Canada And The U.S. Post-Nafta, Eric Tucker Feb 2015

"Great Expectations" Defeated?: The Trajectory Of Collective Bargaining Regimes In Canada And The U.S. Post-Nafta, Eric Tucker

Eric M. Tucker

From the beginning of the free-trade era one contentious area has been the impact of trade liberalization on labor law. Opponents of NAFTA (and some supporters) predicted a regulatory race to the bottom (RTB) would ensue leading to increasingly deregulated labor markets. The result would be weaker collective bargaining laws, lower minimum standards, and a decline in the social wage. In recent years a number of scholars have examined the question in light of more than fifteen years experience under CUFTA and ten under NAFTA and there seems to be a growing consensus that, contrary to those 'great expectations', labor …


The Faces Of Coercion: The Legal Regulation Of Labor Conflict In Ontario, 1880-1889, Eric Tucker Feb 2015

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 …


Shall Wagnerism Have No Dominion?, Eric Tucker Feb 2015

Shall Wagnerism Have No Dominion?, Eric Tucker

Eric M. Tucker

The Wagner Act Model has formed the basis of Canada’s collective bargaining regime since World War II but has come under intense scrutiny in recent years because of legislative weakening of collective bargaining rights, constitutional litigation defending collective bargaining rights and declining union density. This article examines and assesses these developments, arguing that legislatively we have not witnessed a wholesale attack on Wagnerism, but rather a selective weakening of some of its elements. In the courts, it briefly appeared as if the judiciary might constitutionalize meaningful labour rights and impede the erosion of Wagnerism, but recent judicial case law suggests …


Constitutional Labour Rights In Canada: Farm Workers And The Fraser Case, Fay Faraday, Judy Fudge, Eric Tucker Jul 2014

Constitutional Labour Rights In Canada: Farm Workers And The Fraser Case, Fay Faraday, Judy Fudge, Eric Tucker

Eric M. Tucker

On 29 April 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada released its much-anticipated decision in Attorney General of Ontario v Fraser, which dealt with the scope of constitutional protection of collective bargaining. The case involved a constitutional challenge to an Ontario statute on the grounds that it violated agricultural workers’ freedom of association and right to equality by excluding them from the statutory protection that is available to virtually all other private sector workers and by failing to provide them with alternative legislative support for meaningful and effective collective bargaining rights. Although the Court upheld the constitutionality of the legislation …


Labour Law And Fragmentation Before Statutory Collective Bargaining, Eric Tucker Jul 2014

Labour Law And Fragmentation Before Statutory Collective Bargaining, Eric Tucker

Eric M. Tucker

No abstract provided.


The Constitutional Right To Bargain Collectively: The Ironies Of Labour History In The Supreme Court Of Canada, Eric Tucker Jul 2014

The Constitutional Right To Bargain Collectively: The Ironies Of Labour History In The Supreme Court Of Canada, Eric Tucker

Eric M. Tucker

In June 2007 the Supreme Court of Canada held that the right to collective bargaining is a constitutionally protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms' guarantee of freedom of association. In so doing, they overruled a twenty-year old line of precedent that had rejected that very proposition. The court rested its current position of four grounds, one of which was that Canadian labour history supports the view that collective bargaining had become recognized as a fundamental right prior to the Charter. This article critically reviews the court's labour history and argues that it erroneously asserts that workers enjoyed a …