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Thursday July 29, 2010

MILESTONES IN LABOUR LAW

  • In Canada, the union concept of strength in unity came into existence in the early 1800's.

  • In 1872, Toronto printers mounted a vigorous campaign for the 9-hour day and 54-hour week. In the same year, Prime Minister Sir John A. MacDonald finally introduced a law in parliament, and from that time on, Canadian workers had the legal right to form unions and to act through them to achieve better wages and conditions.

  • Present day Canadian labour relations legislation had its beginnings in the early part of the century, in the form of statutes requiring conciliation before a strike.
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  • The United States enacted its National Labour Relations (Wagner) Act in 1935 and Canadian legislation followed that: guaranteed the right of employees to engage in collective bargaining through their chosen representatives and required employers to bargain in good faith with them; removed the right to strike during the term of a collective agreement; substituted grievance arbitration as a method of enforcing compliance with the terms of the collective agreement and; prohibited (as an unfair labour practice), conduct aimed at interference with union activity.

  • Toward the end of the Second World War, labour relations came to be governed, for the most part, by the terms of the federal Wartime Labour Relations Regulations. (P.C. 1003, February 17, 1944.)

  • After the war, building on this foundation, Parliament enacted labour legislation in the form of the Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act, the principles of which were adopted in similar legislation by the provinces. Today, the principal statute governing labour relations in our province is the Ontario Labour relations Act.