Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace

In November 2010, Queen's Law launched the Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace (CLCW).  The first of its kind in Canada, the Centre will provide an intellectual home for the Canadian labour and employment law community.

The Centre will train the next generation of leading labour and employment law practitioners, teachers and scholars, lead research into emerging trends and problems in workplace-related law, and actively exchange knowledge with labour and employment law stakeholders.  The Centre's focal activities will include research, curriculum development, teaching, dialogue and outreach on the role of the law in the contemporary workplace. 

News

We're Going to Barcelona!

Centre researchers will be attending the inaugural conference of the newly-formed international Labour Law Research Network, to be held at the Faculty of Law, Ompeu Fabra University (UPF), Barcelona, Spain from June 13-15, 2013.  The Centre's panel, entitled Frontiers of Workplace Human Rights:  A View from the Americas, will feature presentations on the following topics:   "Disability accommodation in employment:  How does an aging population matter and what might it mean for law and policy?" (Kevin Banks)   "Discrimination on the basis of "family status":  New tool for transforming workplaces and societies or Trojan horse for subverting gender equality?" (Elizabeth Shilton)

"Giving effect to individual rights in a system where unions control access to collective agreement enforcement procedures" (Bernie Adell)

"Labour law and the regulation of domestic work:  A comparative anlysis of Brazil and Spain" (Ana Gomes, together with I. Baviera Puig of the University of Navarra, Spain)

The Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace is very pleased to have contributed support to the conference to enable researchers from the developing world to attend.

CLCW Awarded $10,000 SARC Grant

Centre Director Kevin Banks and the Centre Researcher Elizabeth Shilton have been awarded a $10,000 grant from the Senate Advisory Research Committee (SARC) to develop their research project entitled "The Changing Role of Labour Relations Boards in Canada:  Key Research Questions for the 21st Century".   The project will examine the many significant changes in the functions of labour relations boards across Canada since they were first established in period immediately after World War II, and explore whether their policies, procedures and adjudicative structures have kept pace with those changes.  Banks and Shilton are working on this project with an expert subcommittee of current and former labour boards chairs, all of whom are members of the Centre's Advisory Committee:  Elizabeth MacPherson, Bob Blair and Donald Carter.

The Douglas Cunningham Visitorship in Labour and Employment Law Webinar with Roger L. Martin:

Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL   On Monday, February 4th, the Centre hosted the Douglas Cunningham Visitorship in Labour and Employment Law webinar with Roger L. Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. His webinar titled "Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL" can be viewed live free in the link provided below.   View the Free Webinar   Webinar Program

Roger Martin has served as dean of the Rotman School of Management since September 1, 1998. Previously, he spent 13 years as a Director of Monitor Company, a global strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he served as co-head of the firm for two years.

His research work is in Integrative Thinking, Business Design, Corporate Social Responsibility and Country Competitiveness. He writes extensively and is a regular contributor to: Harvard Business Review’s The Conversation blog, the Financial Times’ Judgment Call column, and Washington Post’s On Leadership blog. He has written fourteen Harvard Business Review articles and published seven books: Fixing the Game (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011): The Design of Business (Harvard Business School Press, 2009); The Opposable Mind (Harvard Business School Press, 2007); The Responsibility Virus (Basic Books, 2002); Canada: What It Is, What It Can Be (with Jim Milway, Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2012); and Diaminds (with Mihnea Moldoveanu, University of Toronto Press, 2009), and The Future of the MBA (with Mihnea Moldoveanu, Oxford University Press, 2008). In February 2013, his eight book, Playing to Win, co-authored with former P&G Chairman and CEO AG Lafley, will be released (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013)

In 2011, Roger placed 6th on the Thinkers50 list, a biannual ranking of the most influential global business thinkers, sharing the top ten with Clay Christensen, Michael Porter and Malcolm Gladwell, among others. In 2010, he was named one of the 27 most influential designers in the world by Business Week. In 2007 he was named a Business Week 'B-School All-Star' for being one of the 10 most influential business professors in the world. Business Week also named him one of seven 'Innovation Gurus' in 2005.

He serves on the Boards of Thomson Reuters Corporation, Research in Motion, The Skoll Foundation, and the Canadian Credit Management Foundation. He chair of Tennis Canada and chair of the Ontario Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress.

A Canadian from Wallenstein, Ontario, Roger received his AB from Harvard College, with a concentration in Economics, in 1979 and his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1981. .

The Douglas Cunningham Visitorship in Labour and Employment Law Webinar with Cynthia Estlund:

What Is Democracy For in China?  The Case of Trade Union Elections   On Monday, January 28th, the Centre hosted the Douglas Cunningham Visitorship in Labour and Employment Law webinar with Cynthia Estlund, Professor at the New York University School of Law. Her webinar titled "What is Democracy For in China?  The Case of Trade Union Elections" can be viewed live free in the link provided below.   View the Free Webinar:   Webinar Program

Professor Cynthia Estlund is the Catherine A. Rein Professor at the New York University School of Law.  She has written extensively on workplace regulation and governance; worker voice and participation; freedom of expression and procedural fairness at work; diversity, integration, and affirmative action; and many aspects of collective labour law.  Her current research is primarily comparative, with a major focus on Chinese labour law and labour relations.  She is the author of Regoverning the Workplace:  From Self-Regulation to Co-Regulation (Yale Univ. Press, 2010), and Working Together:  How Workplace Bonds Strengthen a Diverse Democracy (Oxford Univ. Press, 2003).