About the Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace

Working closely with scholars, academics, and practitioners across the field, the CLCW will aim to address challenges currently posed to workers, employers, counsel, adjudicators and policy-makers arising from globalization, demographic changes, the human rights revolution, economic restructuring, and the recent constitutional entrenchment of a right to collective bargaining, together with many other contemporary influences.

CLCW Mission:

The mission of the Centre is to advance law and policy in the contemporary workplace.

CLCW Vision:

To be a leading force for innovation in law, policy and dialogue in the contemporary workplace.

Strategic Plan:

The Centre's Strategic Plan is now available.

Centre Leadership

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Kevin Banks CLCW Director & Assistant Professor Faculty of Law Queen's University Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 Tel: 613-533-6000, ext 79244 fax: 613-533-6509 e-mail: banksk@queensu.ca   List of Current Research and Recent Publications

Kevin Banks is appointed to the Faculty of  Law at Queen’s University and is the Director of the Queen's Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace.  He holds an S.J.D. from Harvard Law School (2003), and an LL.B. (1989) and B.A. (1986) in economics from the University of Toronto.  He has served in a number of senior positions within the Public Service of Canada, including Director General, Labour Policy and Workplace Information, Director of Research with the Federal Labour Standards Review Commission, and Director, Inter-American Labour Co-operation.  In the latter capacity was responsible for the office that negotiates and implements Canada’s trade-related labour agreements in the Americas, and for managing Canada’s participation in Inter-American Conference of Ministers of Labour.   From 1998 to April 2001, he was Senior Labour Law Advisor with the Secretariat of the Commission for Labor Cooperation, created under international labour agreement linked to the North American Free Trade Agreement.  Prior to joining the Commission Secretariat, Kevin practised labour law for seven years, representing unions and individual workers.  In 1993 he acted as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations.  His S.J.D. dissertation explored the policy underpinnings of the linkage between international trade and labour standards, and the challenges that this linkage poses to traditional models of international governance.  He has a number of publications on domestic, international and comparative labour law and related matters, including a recent contribution to an edited volume published by Cambridge University Press,  “The Impact of Globalization on Labour Standards”, in J. Craig and M. Lynk eds. Globalization and the Future of Labour Law (2006); and a co-authored book entitled North American Labor Relations Law - A Comparative Guide to the Labor Relations Laws of Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Trish Appleyard CLCW Associate Director Faculty of Law Queen's University Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 e-mail: trish.appleyard@queensu.ca

Trish Appleyard was called to the bar in the Province of Ontario in 2009.  She earned her J.D. from Queen’s University in 2009 and a Master of Industrial Relations in 2006.  She earned a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Calgary in 2004, where she specialized in Human Resources and Organizational Dynamics.

Trish articled with the Toronto office of the international law firm of Baker & McKenzie LLP, and joined the Firm as an associate in its Labour, Employment & Employee Benefits group in 2009. She also completed a clerkship with the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Bureau for Employer’s Activities — where she engaged in a comprehensive review of international labour conventions and assisted in the development of a labour standards toolkit for employers’ organizations.

Trish won numerous academic awards at Queen’s, including the Vincent Principi Memorial Award in Labour Law, the Baker & McKenzie Award in Labour Law, the Professor H.R.S. Ryan Prize in Evidence and the Reuben Wells Leonard Prize in Advanced Tort Law.  She was actively involved as the President of the Labour and Employment Law Society and the Law Students’ Society as Joint Program Representative.

Prior to her career in law, Trish earned a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Calgary and worked in Employee Relations with Greyhound Canada Transportation Corp.

Trish is a member of the Ontario and Canadian Bar Associations.

Elizabeth Shilton CLCW Senior Fellow Faculty of Law Queen's University Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 Tel: 416-461-5254 e-mail: shiltone@queensu.ca

Elizabeth Shilton was appointed the Law Foundation of Ontario Senior Fellow at the CLCW on February 1st, 2011. As a Senior Fellow with extensive experience in the field, Elizabeth contributes valuable expertise to the Centre. Her postdoctoral work in gender and pension reform will contribute vitally to the CLCW research programme.

Elizabeth Shilton holds an LLM from Harvard and an SJD from the University of Toronto. She was a founding partner of Cavalluzzo Hayes Shilton McIntyre & Cornish, a Toronto-based law firm specializing in union-side labour law. She practiced there for many years, where she advised unions in both the public and private sector on labour and employment law issues, including human rights and constitutional law, and appeared before administrative tribunals and courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada, in significant cases involving employment and equality rights. She was one of the first lawyers certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada as a Labour Law Specialist. She has published and spoken widely on education labour and employment law and on workplace human rights issues. She taught labour, employment and collective bargaining law as an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and Osgoode Hall Law School, and has been a Visiting Scholar at Osgoode’s Institute for Feminist Legal Studies. Elizabeth is also a member of the Ontario Financial Services Tribunal.

Most recently, Elizabeth’s research interests have focused on domestic and comparative employment pension policy and related issues of economic security. Her SJD thesis traces the evolution of employment pension plans from gratuities provided at an employer’s discretion to terms of the contract of employment, arguing that while pension plans are now formally recognized as establishing employee rights, the current legal framework does not provide employees with the tools to influence the content of those rights or to enforce them effectively. Her current research project focuses on gender and pension reform, exploring gender inequality in Canada’s current retirement income system, the role played by law and legal institutions in constructing and reinforcing that inequality, and the potential for equality-driven law reform. She teaches an Advanced Labour Law seminar at Queens on Human Rights in the Workplace.