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This thesis provides a multi-method – historical, quantitative, qualitative, and jurisprudential – socio-legal case study of the unionization of agricultural workers in British Columbia. Agricultural employees have access to the Labour Relations Code of British Columbia. A historical examination of exclusion of agricultural workers from labour relations legislation from 1937 to 1975 explores the rationale behind labour relations laws and the political context of the legislative exclusion. Next, economic aspects of BC’s agricultural sector are described, with a focus on employment characteristics and the regionalised nature of agricultural production. Finally, this thesis explains the legal aspects of an ongoing campaign by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) to unionize migrant and resident agricultural workers. The union organizing campaign shows how legal labour relations processes operate in relation to migrant workers in a sector with low rates of unionization and high rates of precarious and low-paid, dangerous work.
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Access to labour relations legislation is generally seen as a prerequisite to unionization of agricultural workers in Canada. British Columbia is one of eight Canadian provinces that now include agricultural workers in provincial labour relations legislation. But agricultural workers were not always included. Although union organizing and strike activity were not unheard of in BC’s agricultural sector in the 1930s, the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1937 excluded agricultural workers. This exclusion followed a larger pattern of excluding agricultural workers from employment-related legislation. Agricultural workers continued to be excluded until the mid-1970s, when the efforts of NDP backbenchers persuaded their own government that agricultural workers ought to be included in provincial collective bargaining laws. As demonstrated in a brief overview of the two campaigns to unionize agricultural workers under BC’s labour relations legislation since 1975, although small numbers of workers have been able to form unions and achieve collective agreements under the legislative protections of the Labour Code, those collective bargaining relationships have thus far proven unstable and often short-lived.
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In a momentous decision, released on 30 January 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v Saskatchewan (SFL) that the right to strike is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom's guarantee of freedom of association. Writing for the majority (5:2), Justice Abella asserted: The conclusion that the right to strike is an essential part of a meaningful collective bargaining process in our system of labour relations is supported by history, by jurisprudence, and by Canada's international obligations … The right to strike is not merely derivative of collective bargaining, it is an indispensable component of that right. It seems to me to be the time to give this conclusion constitutional benediction. The case is significant not only for the Court's conclusion that the freedom of association protected in section 2(d) of the Canadian Charter includes the right to strike, but also because it signalled that the gradual expansion of the scope of constitutional protection for labour rights that began in 2001 with Dunmore, had not been reversed in 2011 in Fraser. In fact, Justice Abella began her judgment in SFL by remarking that ‘clearly the arc bends increasingly towards workplace justice’. The crucial issue before the Court was the constitutionality of provincial legislation that unilaterally designated public sector workers as essential and prohibited them from striking.... --Introduction (footnotes omitted)
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