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The End of the Labour Law Regime
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The End of the Labour Law Regime
The End of the Labour Law Regime
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| gbuddy |
Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 7:53 pm
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Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 77 Location: Vancouver |
The labour law regime - statutes, tribunals and courts - is the means by which the privileged special interests that control society ensure there can be no progress in tackling any of the issues that we face in our working lives.
However a regime that is designed on a plan suitable for the 19th Century cannot hope to deal with the modern world. And so this one is dying. In Canada, the "superior" courts protect the labour boards with what they call the "patently unreasonable standard", which has been cited for years when someone has the temerity to challenge a labour board decision through "judicial review". In its "Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick" decision, the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada finally confessed that they can't really define this "standard", though they did not go so far as to admit that the reason is because it is, always was, pure nonsense. My experience with this nonsense standard goes back to 2003, when a BC Supreme Court judge decided a judicial review case against the BC Labour Relations Board by finding in my favour. By the end of the year three BC Court of Appeal judges had overturned his finding. During the intervening months I had been kept busy fighting the LRB and its two allies, CUPE and the City of Vancouver, in a futile effort to get them to comply with the first court judgement. The litigation continues. Once you get into a war with the Hydra, it never ends. I have been told, I don't know how many times, that I simply cannot win before any of Canada's Star Chambers. However, I have persisted, partly because this has been a valuable learning experience. The Star Chambers (like so many of our dysfunctional governing institutions) have a very doubtful future, so perhaps its time we started to build their replacement. The very limited presence of the Star Chambers on the Net is an acknowledgement that the Net offers unlimited potential for new ways of solving old problems. Canada's labour boards each have a web site, where they post their decisions. On the federal Canadian Industrial Relations Board's database is evidence of a recent unexplained policy decision. From the beginning of this year most of the decisions that are tagged "RD" (Reasons for Decision) as opposed to "BU" (Bargaining Unit Decisions) cannot be read online. I believe this new policy is a response to the first two of three letters I sent to the Chair of the Board: The Prima Facie Case The Prima Facie Case II The Prima Facie Case III I believe it is only the DFR decisions that the Board is now reluctant to share with the public. After it's meeting with the BC Labour Relations Board, the CIRB had said that it was going to follow the BCLRB's practice with DFR cases, and that it would explain through its decisions how it would be making these prima facie determinations. Well, I don't think they've done that. And now, they don't want us to see what they are doing. Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps there's another explanation, that the CIRB will be offering us very soon. Otherwise I'd say that Ms. MacPherson and her colleagues do not understand the purpose of the Net, which is to share information. And anyone who fundamentally fails to understand that, is not long for this world. |
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| wm pasz |
Posted: Wed May 19, 2010 7:46 pm
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Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 1219 Location: Toronto |
I don't doubt that they don't want to post DFR decisions but I'm clear on how that's going to usher in the end of the labour law regime.
_________________ Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else. - Malcolm X |
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| gbuddy |
Posted: Wed May 19, 2010 11:29 pm
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Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 77 Location: Vancouver |
I'm not suggesting that this particular instance of questionable conduct is going to trigger the failure of the labour law regime. However, I think this is an example of behaviour that is becoming more common within all our governing institutions, and I think that behaviour is a response to their perception that they all have very limited futures. I think the labour law regime is particularly vulnerable.
I'm not necessarily predicting something like the collapse of Capitalism, but I do think the current system of governance through bureaucracy is unsustainable. I've often cited John Ralston Saul as the author I think best explains why this is so, and his thesis has a lot of support from other authors, e.g. Donald Savoie's more specific focus on government bureaucracy. I will concede though that neither of these authors has offered much in the way of solutions. Saul clearly promotes the concept of the engaged citizen but he doesn't provide a prescription for what such a citizen can or should do. I think we can and will figure that out through experimentation on the Net. |
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