Manufacturing Descent? Labour Law and Union Organizing in the Province of Ontario

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of labour law on union certification dynamics in Ontario during the period 1983 to 2006. Results reveal the independent, significant effects of the Progressive Conservative government's Bill 31 reforms and the recent Liberal government's Bill 144 upon certification success rates and aggregate volumes of new organizing, in expected directions. Results also reveal a massive decline in unfair labour practice complaints following the Bill 7 reforms in 1995, exacerbated by Bill 31, and which remains unaltered by Bill 144. Overall, the results suggest that labour law still has a significant effect upon union organizing over time, despite economic internationalization and/or shifts in industrial structure, and contradict the recent claim that a “pre-1990 equilibrium” in Ontario labour relations policy was recently restored. Rather, the current regime remains, both in formal legal terms and concrete effects, more restrictive of union growth than its pre-1990 form.

‘til Dissolution Do Us Part: (Re)Assessing the First Contract and Trial Marriage Goals of First Contract Arbitration in Ontario

“…While this may serve to exclude some displacements, it does nothing to exclude the recertifications of units previously represented by another union following a decertification. Bartkiw (2008) discussed the issues with identifying raid activity in the OLRB Monthly Reports and uses stricter criteria for excluding raid activity than Riddell (2013), but he also noted that there may be some inconsistency in the reporting methods by the OLRB that makes his method imperfect. Rather than rely solely on the OLRB data, this study uses the CBIS database to identify only new certifications.…”

“…However, Riddell (2013) downplays the magnitude of both the legal and political change that took place during that period. There were also numerous other legal changes under the 1993 reform that (1) made organizing more accessible, including extending the right to organize to new groups of workers/industries, and (2) aided unions in collective bargaining and work stoppages (Bartkiw 2008; Martinello 2000). Riddell also neglects the sea change in the political climate during this period when the Progressive Conservatives led by Mike Harris replaced Bob Rae’s New Democratic Party.…”

The Effect of Labor Relations Laws on Unionization Rates within the Labor Force: Evidence from the Canadian Provinces

“…There is considerable evidence that an important component of the long‐term secular decline of unions in Canada and other OECD countries has been driven by structural economic shifts, in particular the shift from manufacturing to service‐producing employment beginning in the 1980s. Because these trends are likely to have occurred differentially across provinces, and may be themselves correlated with changes in labor laws, we follow Bartkiw () and Freeman and Pelletier () and control for the manufacturing share of paid employment. These annual shares are estimated using the industry codes in the 1976 through 2012 LFS microdata files.…”

“…gap in unionization rates cannot be accounted for by structural economic differences or social attitudes and inferred that the gap is most consistent with differences in legal regimes. Following on this evidence, there now exists a substantial Canadian empirical literature linking changes in provincial labor‐relations laws to administrative data on certification success rates (Bartkiw ; Johnson ; Martinello , ; Riddell ), applications for certification (Johnson ), as well as successful negotiations of first contracts (Riddell ) . This research consistently finds a significant effect of the labor relations regime on the ability of unions to organize new bargaining units.…”