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The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in B.C. Health Services, holding that collective bargaining attracts Charter protection, emphasizes the importance of context in constitutional interpretation. The author agrees with the Court in looking to context as part of a purposive approach to interpretation of laws, and he argues that such an approach can be compared to the way in which labour laws have been developed in Israel — a country which, in his view, is a useful source of comparative law for Canada. In an effort to respond to changing realities in the labour market and labour relations (most notably the weakening of trade unions), Israeli judges have in recent years created a number of collective rights in the area of freedom of association, collective bargaining, and strikes. On the basis of the experience of Israeli courts in developing new workplace protections where they are needed, the author contends that the Supreme Court of Canada should now take the next step and extend Charter protection to the right to strike.

De nombreux travaux ont mis au jour l’inadéquation existant entre les lois du travail conçues pour des relations bipartites entre un salarié et un seul employeur clairement identifiable et les relations de travail tripartites qui découlent des nouveaux modes d’organisation de la production qu’adoptent les entreprises en quête de flexibilité. Le présent texte porte de manière particulière sur l’application d’une importante loi québécoise, la Loi sur les normes du travail, aux relations tripartites découlant du recours à des agences de location de personnel. Cette loi édicte des conditions de travail minimales en matière notamment de rémunération, de durée de travail, de congés ou de protection de d’emploi. Elle met aussi en place des mécanismes particuliers de mise en oeuvre de ces normes qui confèrent un rôle important à un organisme administratif spécialisé, la Commission des normes du travail. L’étude s’appuie sur l’analyse qualitative des plaintes déposées entre 2004 et 2006 par des salariés d’agences auprès de la Commission ainsi que sur des entrevues réalisées avec des membres de son personnel. Les résultats révèlent l’effectivité toute relative de la loi dans le contexte des relations de travail tripartites. Ils illustrent, d’une part, des problèmes concrets d’application qui ont été regroupés sous trois grands types : les difficultés liées à la complexité inhérente aux relations tripartites; les contournements ou les fraudes à la loi; et les défaillances structurelles de la loi. Ils témoignent, d’autre part, des difficultés dans le traitement des plaintes relatives à des relations de travail tripartites. Même si les intervenants (inspecteurs-enquêteurs et procureurs) de la Commission développent des pratiques d’application adaptées aux relations tripartites en tentant d’impliquer toutes les parties qui se partagent le pouvoir de direction du salarié dans la recherche d’une solution, il reste que, conformément au mandat de la Commission, plusieurs plaintes se concluent par des règlements, au demeurant rarement tripartites. Ces pratiques d’application n’ont pas de portée normative au-delà de la sphère d’intervention de la Commission et ne peuvent influencer le traitement judiciaire des litiges soulevant l’application du droit du travail à des relations tripartites. C’est pourquoi des réformes législatives doivent être envisagées. Celles-ci sont d’autant plus nécessaires que le recours à des salariés d’agences de location de personnel n’est pas un phénomène marginal et temporaire. À cause de son expansion et de la diversification de son offre de services, l’industrie de la location de personnel est un phénomène susceptible de transformer profondément le marché du Numerous studies have highlighted the existing mismatch between labour laws conceived for bipartite relations involving an employee and a single and clearly identifiable employer, and tripartite labour relations ensuing from the new modes of

This paper considers the relationship between equaliy rights and the right to freedom of conscience and religion, in the context of employ- ment discrimination by religious organizations. The author points out that while some human rights statutes in Canada grant religious organ- izations an exemption from the prohibition against discrimination, oth- ers provide such organizations with access to a BFOR defence. She explains the importance of the distinction between these contrasting appraches, and discusses how courts and tribunals have interpreted and applied them. The paper also includes an overview of the "special case" of denominational schools in Canada, whose rights and privileges are specificall protected by the Constitution Act, 1867. The author then turns to a consideration of which of the two approaches - the BFOR defence or the exemption - is to be preferred. In this respect, she dis- agrees with Alvin Esau, who has argued (most recentl, in a paper pub- lished in this issue of the Journal) that only the exemption approach is capable of effectivel guaranteeing the exercise offreedom of religion. Rather basing her analysis on the model of separation of church and state set out in Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration, she contends that although the two approaches will often yield the same result in a given case, the BFOR defence approach is preferable, because it better pro- tects both equality rights and freedom of religion.

Introduction : Doctorat honorifique décerné au professeur Mark Thompson/Honorary Doctorate Awarded to Professor Mark Thompson

This article investigates management commitment to workplace health and safety through an analysis of the implementation of participatory ergonomic (PE) interventions in three worksites. The PE programs were established to address the burden of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Drawing upon interview and observational data, the analysis examines the evolution of managerial support for PE programs over time and in the context of pressures internal and external to the worksites. Ergonomic Change Teams in all three sites experienced problems establishing authority to act as change agents and in accessing employee time to carry out their activities. Resolution of these problems was heavily contingent on the commitment of senior management, and the efforts of individual management personnel to intervene in support of the PE program. Our findings highlight that "management" is not a monolithic entity and managerial structures are often marked by divisions in priorities, including health and safety.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the recent B.C. Health Services case that the protection of "freedom of association" in s. 2(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms should be interpreted to provide "at least as much protection" for associational rights as is provided by Convention No. 87 of the International Labour Organization. The ILO Committee on Freedom of Association sees the convention as giving trade unions a right of access to employer property when attempting to organize employees. However Canadian statute and common law provides employers with an almost unfettered right to exclude union organizers, even when allowing them to have access would not interfrre with the employer's production interests. This paper examines whether that law will have to be rethought in the wake of the Supreme Court s decision.

Affectées par des changements nombreux, les équipes syndicales doivent elles-mêmes se transformer. Comment comprendre leurs cheminements divers dans ces péripéties ? Une comparaison entre des établissements canadiens et européens permet de fonder empiriquement et théoriquement une analyse de ces phénomènes. Les auteurs formulent le concept de « syndicalismes référentiels ». Il articule les principales dimensions à travers lesquelles se dessinent les transformations des acteurs : répertoires d’action, identités collectives, ressources, capacité représentative, capacité stratégique. En retenant les cas de deux établissements, canadien et français, l’article illustre la place respective et les interactions de ces dimensions. Leur hiérarchisation au sein de l’action collective permet de comprendre pourquoi des situations institutionnelles inégales peuvent donner lieu à des évolutions analogues. L’incertitude, les pertes de repère caractérisent une phase paradoxale où les acteurs collectifs ne peuvent échapper aux risques d’une redéfinition.

The election of William Kolisnyk as alderman for Winnipeg's Ward Three in the fall of 1926 was celebrated as one of the first times that any candidate in North America running under the banner of a Communist Party was elected to public office. Although he was only an alderman for four years, a study of Kolisnyk's political life contributes to the study of communist history in several ways. His term in office was split roughly in half by the introduction of Third Period ideology. As the Communist Party's sole elected representative. at the time, Kolisnyk's political activity demonstrates the practical implications of this dramatic policy shift. While the Third Period radically changed Kolisnyk's politics, several local issues significantly influenced his politics. Ethnicity, both within the Party and in Kolisnyk's constituency, profoundly affected his career. The paper also examines the political issues pursued by communists at the municipal level and the communist community that brought Kolisnyk to office. Therefore, this examination of William Kolisnyk's aldermanic career reveals the importance of international influences as well as the political realities of Winnipeg's communist community, both of which contributed to the political activities of one of Canada's first elected communists.

In Heintz v. Christian Horizons, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal upheld an employment discrimination claim against an evan- gelical Christian organization that operated community living homes for the developmentally disabled, providing services not ony to co-religion- ists but also to the general public. The Tribunal concluded that in light of its activity in the public arena, Christian Horizons did not qualify under Ontario's Human Rights Code as a "special employer" entitled to an exception from the prohibition against discrimination and that, in any event, conformity with afaith-based moral code imposed by the organi- zation on its employees was not a BFOR. The effect of this ruling, the author notes, is that Christian Horizons was precluded from hiring or firing employees for any positions whatsoever based on prohibited grounds (in this case, sexual orientation), nor could the organization impose a moral code on any employee if the code discriminated on such grounds. The author is strongly critical of the Tribunal's decision, argu- ing that it took an unduly narrow approach to the "special employer" exception - one that denies to religious organizations "equal space" with other service providers operating in the public square. He also con- tends that, by rejecting conformity with the organization's moral code as a BFOR, even for managerial or higher ministerial positions, the Tribunal simply acted on a value choice that the right not to be discrim- inated against should trump the right to religious freedom. In the author's view, that value choice is evident in the way the Tribunal delinked the nature of the employment from the employment itself, and adopted a purely "instrumental" (as opposed to "organic ") understand- ing of the complainant's job duties. The author goes on to argue that Professor of Law, University of Manitoba. This paper was prepared on the invi- tation of the Canadian Constitutional Foundation for its Conference on "Race, Religion, Equality and Freedom," held in Toronto in October 2009. My thanks to lain Benson, Craig Jones, and Andrew Lokan for comments, although it should be noted that they do not necessarily agree with what I say in this paper.

Providing his prognosis for the future of a right to strike, in light of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in B.C. Health, the author argues that the Court will likely recognize constitutional protection for such a right. In his view, based on the scope offreedom of association set out in that decision, as well as the adoption of a "substantial interfer- ence" test, government measures will probably be held to violate s. 2(d) of the Charter if they totally remove the right to strike, or restrict it so severely as to deny access to a meaningful process of collective bargain- ing. However, turning to a consideration of the problems and concerns that would arise from Charter protection for a right to strike, the author suggests that recognition of a broad, open-ended right may open the door to challenges to the numerous restrictions on strike activity found in Canadian labour relations statutes, and embroil the courts in ongoing review of legislative choices on policy issues. Thus, he expects that the Supreme Court will recognize only a limited right to strike - one in which the legislature would be permitted to substitute strikes with some other fair impasse resolution mechanism (such as interest arbitration), in situations where there are policy reasons for withholding the right to strike or for bringing an end to a strike that threatens the public interest.

The article reviews the book, "Regulating Flexibility: The Political Economy of Employment Standards," by Mark P. Thomas.

The technique of permitting unions to derogations from core employment standards has been increasingly advocated as a means of making labour law more flexible while still protecting workers since the union is considered to bring countervailing power in support of workers' preferences. The new British Columbia Employment Standards Act contains a broad union derogation provision. Industrial relations experts have commented that employment standards that permit the opting out of statutory employee protections in this way invites corrupt arrangements between employers and employer-dominated unions. Using the new BC statute as a case study, the assumption that requiring the union's consent to derogation from core standards ensures that the derogation reflects workers' preferences is tested using two sources of empirical data: collective agreements entered into by an employer friendly union (the Christian Labour Association of Canada); and collective agreements in which the union had neither the opportunity nor the strength to prevent derogation.

From a case-study based on an analysis model, which takes into account four levels of explanation (personal, interpersonal, group and organizational), and includes the study of the interactions between these different levels, this report puts forward six observations: (1) the importance of performing the analysis on several levels, (2) the existence within harassment situations of two types of process (victimizing and conflictual), (3) the fact that these processes can co-exist at different levels of analysis, (4) the existence of interactions between processes, (5) the variability of a situation across time, and (6) the necessity of distinguishing two categories of influence involved in contextual processes. From these conclusions, the authors develop a new analysis model, which is process-based, integrative and dynamic.

The article briefly reviews "Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle," by Laurie B. Green, "A Fair Day's Wage for a Fair Day's Work? Sweated Labour and the Origins of Minimum Wage Legislation in Britain," by Sheila Blackburn, "Between Growth and Security: Swedish Social Democracy From a Strong Society to a Third Way," by Jenny Anderson, "Development, Democracy, and Welfare States: Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe," by Stephen Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman, "Voices from the Ships: Australia’s Seafarers and their Union," by Diane Kirkby, "Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa," by Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass, "Feeding the World: An Economic History of Agriculture, 1800–2000," by Giovanni Federico, and "Reforming Early Retirement in Europe, Japan and the USA," by Bernhard Ebbinghaus.

The article reviews the book, "Creating a Failed State: The U.S. and Canada in Afghanistan," by John W. Warnock.

Cet article examine les modalités d’entrée dans l’âge adulte de deux cohortes de jeunes québécois, nés entre 1942 et 1951 (génération lyrique) et entre 1962-71 (génération X). Examinant l’effet net de la précarisation du marché du travail à partir des données rétrospectives de l’Enquête sociale générale de 2001, il tente plus spécifiquement de savoir jusqu’à quel point les mutations économiques des années 1980-90 permettent d’expliquer le phénomène d’allongement de la jeunesse et de la désynchronisation des parcours de vie. L’analyse montre qu’en définitive, la précarisation de l’emploi semble assez peu liée à ces mutations des parcours de vie, celles-ci semblant davantage s’expliquer par des transformations de nature non-économique tels que l’allongement des études et le changement de valeurs.

Cet article examine les modalités d'entrée dans l'âge adulte de deux cohortes de jeunes québécois, nés entre 1942 et 1951 (génération lyrique) et entre 1962-71 (génération X). Examinant l'effet net de la précarisation du marché du travail à partir des données rétrospectives de l'Enquête sociale générale de 2001, il tente plus spécifiquement de savoir jusqu'à quel point les mutations économiques des années 1980-90 permettent d'expliquer le phénomène d'allongement de la jeunesse et de la désynchronisation des parcours de vie. L'analyse montre qu'en définitive, la précarisation de l'emploi semble assez peu liée à ces mutations des parcours de vie. Ces mutations s'expliqueraient en fait davantage par des transformations de nature non-économique telles que l'allongement des études et l'assouplissement de certaines contraintes normatives au sein de la société québécoise.

The article reviews the book, "A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why It Failed," by David Barner.