Queen's Law to host workshop on landmark labour case via videoconference

Photo by Bernard Clark

Professor Kevin Banks (middle), CLCW Director, pictured at a strategic planning meeting last November with board members Professor Emeritus Bernie Adell, Dean Bill Flanagan, and Research Fellow Elizabeth Shilton.

Queen’s Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace (CLCW) is bringing together labour and constitutional law experts to discuss Ontario (Attorney General) v. Fraser, the long-awaited Supreme Court of Canada decision on freedom of association. The afternoon event, “Workshop on the Implications of the Fraser Case,” will be broadcast live from Macdonald Hall via videoconference to the offices of Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal on June 13.

Practitioners, scholars, students and policy-makers will be provided with a critical examination of the immediate and longer-term implications of one of the most significant labour and constitutional law rulings in Canadian history. Released on April 29, the decision -- concerning the freedom of association rights of agricultural workers -- may set boundaries on the Charter's protection of collective bargaining under section 2(d).

Professor Kevin Banks, CLCW Director, notes that it will take time to work out the wider implications of the case. As for the immediate impact of Fraser, he says, “This decision is of great importance to unions, workers and employers who are not covered by traditional labour relations statutes.”

In the decision, the Court emphasizes the importance of statutory duties to bargain in protecting constitutional collective bargaining rights. “Fraser will place hurdles before any worker or union claiming that a law imposing a duty to bargain violates the Charter,” Banks says. “Workers or unions will have to present evidence that the regime has been tested and that experience shows it to interfere with the capacity of workers to bargain collectively. The Court effectively presumes that a law granting such protections will not.”

What does the constitutional right to bargain collectively now entail? What are Fraser’simplications for the right to strike, for freedom of expression and for equality rights? What are the implications for the status of international labour standards in Canadian law? These are just some of the questions the experts will address.

The workshop, the first academic event organized by the CLCW, will produce a set of short scholarly papers and a set of comments to be published in the Centre’s inaugural issue of Canadian Labour and Employment Law Journal later this year. Launched in November 2010, the CLCW provides an intellectual home for the Canadian labour and employment law community.

This program counts for three hours towards nine of the 12 hours of annual Continuing Professional Development (CPD) required by the Law Society of Upper Canada.

For more information on the "Workshop on the Implications of the Fraser Case" and to register, go to http://law.queensu.ca/lawResearch/clcw/events.html