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Canadian Labor Law 101: Understanding the Canadian Labor Relations Culture


Product Code - INAU01
Speaker(s): Dr. Michael Lynk, Associate Dean, Academic and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, the University of Western Ontario
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The United States and Canada are each other's most important trading partner. With more than two billion dollars in goods and services crossing the U.S.-Canada border every day, our economies and our labor forces are becoming increasingly intertwined. Understanding each other's employment climate and workplace rights is becoming a necessity.

Canadian labor law occupies a prominent place in the Canadian economy. Approximately 30 percent of the Canadian workforce is unionized, including many important national industries such as mining, aeronautics, broadcasting, transportation, construction, telecommunications, heavy manufacturing, and the public sector. Collective agreements in these industries set the trends for wage and benefit levels right across the economy.

Labor law in Canada was deeply inspired by the American Wagner Act, and closely mirrored it for many decades. Since the 1970s, however, Canadian labor laws have been regularly amended, and differ in many significant ways from the U.S.s National Labor Relations Act. Understanding these differences is key to understanding the industrial relations culture in Canada.

Join Dr. Michael Lynk, Associate Dean, Academic and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, at the University of Western Ontario. Dr. Lynk has taught labor, human rights, constitutional, and administrative law at Western Law since 1999. In addition, he has also taught labor law at the University of Ottawa and Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand). He is a graduate of Dalhousie University (LL.B.) and Queens University (LL.M.). Before becoming an academic, he practiced labor law in Ottawa and Toronto for a decade.

Key Issues that Dr. Lynk will be address during the Webinar include:

  • Overview of the Canadian labor law system
  • Certification
  • Unfair labor practices
  • Collective bargaining and bad-faith bargaining
  • Human rights in Canadian workplaces
  • Labor arbitration
  • Constitutional protection of Canadian labor law

Dr. Michael Lynk, Associate Dean, Academic and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, the University of Western Ontario

Dr. Michael Lynk is Associate Dean, Academic and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, the University of Western Ontario. He joined the Western Law faculty in 1999, and has taught labor, human rights, constitutional, and administrative law.

Professor Lynk has also taught labor law at the University of Ottawa and Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand). He is a graduate of Dalhousie University (LL.B.) and Queens University (LL.M.). Before becoming an academic, he practiced labor law in Ottawa and Toronto for a decade. Professor Lynk is also an active labor arbitrator, and is a vice-chair with the Ontario Grievance Settlement Board, and has served as a vice-chair with the Ontario Public Service Grievance Board. He has written widely on the issues of labor law and human rights in the unionized Canadian workplace, and is a frequent speaker at industrial relations and labor law conferences across the Canada.

Professor Lynk is a co-author of Trade Union Law in Canada (Canada Law Book), and the co-editor, with John Craig, of Globalization and the Future of Labour Law (Cambridge University Press, 2006). He is a senior co-editor of the Labour Law Casebook (7th and 8th eds.), which is the national casebook used in law schools across the country. Prof. Lynk is also an editor of the Canadian Labour and Employment Law Journal. In recent years, he has been the co-organizer of a very successful annual labor law lecture and conference series at the University, which has attracted leading academic, legal and judicial figures from Canada and abroad as speakers.