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An Empirical Assessment of the Employee Free Choice Act: The Economic Implications by Ann Layne-Farrar provides empirical evidence concerning the impact on the U.S. unemployment rate and employment-to-population ratio should the highly controversial Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) become law. The paper has received widespread public attention and its analysis is being used in the debate surrounding the EFCA. This commentary raises three important questions about the empirical analysis: Are the predictions presented in the study, concerning the effects of the EFCA, realistic? Is the research design likely to identify the effects of the EFCA? Why do the data used in the analysis cover such a short time period? The discussion suggests the empirical results presented in Layne-Farrar (2009) should be viewed with considerable skepticism.

Addresses the growing inequality, decline of unions, and stagnant labour laws in Canada.

The conflict between property rights and the right of association creates the case for various policy avenues to ensure that employees have effective access to the right to associate for the purposes of collective bargaining. One such labour policy in Canada is first-contract arbitration. The experience of this policy in Quebec over the last three decades has achieved key objectives: ensuring first agreements for newly unionized workers, developing constructive bargaining relationships and overcoming what can be a major obstacle to an effective right to associate. After reviewing this experience, this article provides an overview of the unionization campaigns resulting in union certifications for the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada in six Wal-Mart facilities in Quebec province over the last six years. It then examines two recent cases of first-contract arbitration for these certifications. In one case, the company summarily closed the department concerned after the first contract was awarded. In the second case, the store remains open, with an operative collective agreement. Absent a policy of first-contract arbitration, it appears unlikely that this would be the case. The evolution of the bargaining relationship beyond the first-contract will provide a key test of the relative efficacy of Canadian policy approaches to ensure the freedom of association.

Takes note of the Open Statement signed by over 120 scholars on unionization and economic and social well-being of Canadian. Introduces the theme: of the issue: the U.S. Employee Free Choice Act and its implications for Canada, including critical reviews of Anne Layne-Farrar's argument that unionization has undermined Canadian labour market performance.

American labour law is broken. As many as 60 percent of American workers would like to have a union, yet only 12 percent actually do. This is largely due to systematic employer interference, often in violation of existing laws. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), currently before Congress, contains provisions to rectify this problem. Canada's experience with similar provisions can be helpful in evaluating the arguments surrounding this act. It suggests that the reforms proposed in EFCA can be expected to safeguard rather than deny employees' free choices. They will not alter the balance of power in collective bargaining, but only help to ensure that workers can exercise their basic right to meaningful representation at work and, potentially, to win gains that could help to reduce inequality and return America to prosperity.

The authors are engaged in a multi-dimensional project that analyzes Canadian private sector experience under provincial and federal labour statutes. The broad objective of the research is to draw nuanced lessons from the Canadian experience that will inform the debate over labour law reform in the U.S. This commentary reflects the authors´ preliminary research results as they relate to the specific proposals included in the Employee Free Choice Act.

[This] is an annotated list of selected recent publications on unionization and labour market performance, with relevance to Canada-U.S. labour market comparisons and the effect of collective bargaining structures on economic and social outcomes. While the broad literature on this topic is vast, the publications summarized below seem to be germane to Canadian aspects of the U.S. Employee Free Choice Act debate that are considered in this special issue of Just Labour. --Introduction

...[O]pponents of proposed changes to U.S. labour law (and, in particular, the Employee Free Choice Act) have attempted to argue that Canada’s labour market experience “proves” that unionization and collective bargaining produce higher unemployment and lower employment. One consultant’s study (Layne-Farrar 2009) has been especially important in making this argument. ...This article conducts a detailed econometric re-examination of Layne-Farrar’s counter-intuitive and sensational findings. --From executive summary

Critiques US economist Anne Layne-Farrar's argument that higher unionization results in higher unemployment.

In the wake of a series of prolabor Supreme Court decisions in Canada, the mantra of “workers' rights as human rights” has gained unprecedented attention in the Canadian labor movement. This article briefly reviews the Canadian labor movement's recent history with the Supreme Court before arguing that elite-driven judicial strategies, advocated by several academics and Canadian unions, threaten, over time, to depoliticize traditional class-based approaches to advancing workers' rights. The argument is premised on the notion that liberal human rights discourse does little to address the inequalities in wealth and power that polarize Canadian society along class lines.

English/French abstracts of articles in the Spring 2009 issue.

English/French abstracts of the articles in the Fall 2009 issue.

The article reviews "Coming to Terms With Nature: Socialist Register 2007," edited by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys. The Register is published annually.

The article reviews the book, "L’approche systémique de la gestion des ressources humaines: le contrat psychologique des relations d’emploi dans les administrations publiques du xxie siècle," by Louise Lemire and Gaétan Martel.

The article reviews the book "James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928 (Book)," by Bryan D. Palmer.

The article reviews the book, "Making a Living: Work and Environment in the United States," by Chad Montrie.

In the summer of 2008, we set out to hear from Ontario´s growing population of temporary help workers, also known as, temporary service workers. Having already conducted studies of temporary help workers in the United States, we sought to compare the working conditions of temporary workers in Ontario to those of workers south of the border. We visited temporary agencies in Toronto and conducted in-depth interviews with over a dozen temporary help workers. Their circumstances are not unlike those of their U.S. counterparts — they are not adequately rewarded for their vital on-call role in contemporary capitalism and they become "stuck" in this relatively new type of work, unable to find and secure full-time employment.

A self-professed sceptic, the author argues that the recognition of a Charter right of employees to organize, bargain and strike would not likely improve labour's lot in an era of declining union membership and influence. In his view, it is doubtful whether Charter litigation has made much of a difference in Canada's social, economic and political life, which is largely determined not by the formal, juridical constitution but by what he calls the "real constitution" - the unequal distribution of wealth and power in society. Moreover, constitutionalization of collec- tive bargaining rights would probably undermine labour law's auton- omy and its effectiveness by promoting the design of industrial relations systems by judges rather than experts, with dysfunctional results. A reconceptualization of the constitutional significance of "labour" does in fact hold the potential to bring about far-reaching consequences for our approach to labour markets, employment standards legislation, pen- sion laws, and the collective bargaining regime. Howeve, the author says, Charter litigation has little capacity to realize that potential, given itsfocus on the juridical constitution and disconnectedness from the real constitution.

The article reviews the book, "The (Un) Making of the Modern Family," by Daniel Dagenais.