Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace

Three-Year Strategic Plan

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

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1. Mission

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2. Vision

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3. Need for the Centre

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4. Strengths and Challenges

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5. Approach

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6. Goals, Objectives, and Performance Measures

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7. Follow-up

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8. Appendix A – Potential Research Priorities

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Executive Summary Mission The mission of the Centre is to advance law and policy in the contemporary workplace. Vision The Centre will be a leading force for innovation in law, policy and dialogue in the contemporary workplace. Needs Met by the Centre Canadian law of the workplace is shifting rapidly in response to a range of forces including globalization, demographic changes, the human rights revolution, economic restructuring, and the recent constitutional entrenchment of a right to collective bargaining. These developments pose daunting challenges to policy makers, practitioners and academics in Ontario and across the country. How well employers, workers, unions and policy makers respond to these challenges will have a profound impact on our social and economic well-being. Sound research and education are needed to ground effective policy debate, administrative reform and community outreach initiatives, and to support innovative thinking on current and emerging legal issues. However, recent years have seen a decline in the capacity of universities across the country to meet these needs, and a decline in the number of top students drawn to field as future practitioners, policy makers and teachers. To begin the intellectual renewal of labour and employment law, it will be necessary to:

• Increase the number of JD students and graduate students drawn to labour and employment law and other workplace-related fields of law, by offering intellectually and financially attractive conditions of study;

• Identify and communicate, through teaching and research, the great significance of labour and employment law to the well-being of Canadians; and

• Seek to build strong and diverse inter-university research networks to plan and carry out sophisticated projects, and to obtain the funding needed for them.

Strengths and Challenges Strengths No other Canadian law school has a centre dedicated to labour and employment law. The Centre provides an opportunity to begin to reverse the long-term decline in research and teaching capacity in this field. Queen's Law has a record of national leadership that leaves it particularly well-placed to address the need for more and better teaching and research in labour and employment law. The Centre will take a broad and forward-looking approach to its field of study, positioning it to address the ever-closer

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interaction between traditional labour and employment law and such other fields of regulation as the law of corporate governance, bankruptcy law, immigration law, constitutional law and social security law. The Centre has recruited an Advisory Committee representing a wide and balanced range of perspectives on workplace law. This committee will provide invaluable guidance, and will enhance the Centre’s credibility with external stakeholders. The Centre will draw upon its Advisory Committee to facilitate research partnerships and other joint activities with tribunals, community organizations, think tanks and government departments. Challenges As is the case for most university research centres today, the Centre will have to rely upon new externally raised funds. The Queen's Faculty of Law does not have the resources to provide the essential managerial and administrative services covered by the seed funds. The current faculty complement in labour and employment law at Queen's - one full-time faculty member, two emeritus faculty, and several adjunct teachers - is not large enough to develop a complete teaching and research program. A significant part of the Centre’s planning; start-up and development costs have been funded by a grant of seed money from the Law Foundation of Ontario. These funds will only last for 18 months. When that funding runs out, the Centre will need new sources of support. Approach The Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace will provide leadership in the intellectual renewal of labour and employment law as a field of study, practice and policy, by:

• Facilitating high-quality research on emerging problems in labour and employment law;

• Educating the next generation of leading practitioners, teachers and scholars; and

• Actively exchanging knowledge with those who have a stake in improving this area of law.

The Centre will aim to provide an intellectual home for the labour and employment law community, in Ontario and nationally. It will be committed to a diversity of perspectives, to multipartism, and to open and innovative inquiry. The Centre will continue to engage an Advisory Committee representing a wide and balanced range of perspectives on workplace law.

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The Centre has to actively seek stable funding in order to secure its future. It will set its priorities carefully, to avoid both the danger of trying to do too much and the opposite danger of unduly limiting its aspirations. It will be mindful of succession planning, in light of its current reliance on a small number of key faculty and staff members, including emeritus faculty. Over the next three years, fundraising will include an active campaign to solicit private donations to cover many of the Centre’s future costs. Individuals, law firms, unions, employers, employer organizations, foundations and governments will be approached as appropriate. Centre researchers will make applications to granting councils for funds to support research projects and the development of research networks and tools for information sharing and dissemination. Goals and Objectives Contingent on obtaining the necessary resources, the Centre will aim to realize within three years the following goals and objectives: Leading Research • Anchor an interdisciplinary network of researchers within and outside Queen's

carrying out coordinated research on key contemporary challenges facing labour and employment law such as those identified by the Centre's Advisory Committee and listed in Appendix A to this plan.

Educating the next generation of teachers and leading practitioners • Support a high quality, research-intensive program of graduate studies; • Ensure that the Queen's Law curriculum has the breadth and depth to address the

issues of greatest significance to today's and tomorrow's workplaces; is multidisciplinary and pluralistic, responding to the diverse needs of students who expect to represent employees, unions and employers; concerns itself with problem-solving skills, such as relationship building and social dialogue, and with practice norms such as collegiality, civility and professionalism; and exposes students to work by the best scholars from Canada and abroad, through a visiting speakers series and a faculty visitors program.

Active outreach and knowledge exchange • Hold, co-sponsor and actively promote regular conferences and debates on issues

of importance in major centres, on a rotating basis; • Open and promote a visiting speakers series to members of the profession and the

general public; • Build an attractive and informative web site; and • Make use of videolink and web dissemination to make conferences and lectures

broadly accessible;

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• Develop courses accessible to members of the professional community, and to qualified students from other law schools.

Detailed objectives and performance measures are set out in the plan that follows.

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Three-Year Strategic Plan for the Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace Queen's University Faculty of Law

1. Mission The mission of the Centre is to advance law and policy in the contemporary workplace. 2. Vision The Centre will be a leading force for innovation in law, policy and dialogue in the contemporary workplace. 3. Need for the Centre

Law in the Contemporary Workplace: Rapid Change, Growing Demand and Complexity, Enduring Importance

An unprecedented number of Canadians participate in the workforce, and the quality of workplace relations matters more than ever to them and to the success of their employers. Canadian law of the workplace is shifting rapidly in response to a range of forces including globalization, demographic changes, the human rights revolution, economic restructuring, and the recent constitutional entrenchment of a right to collective bargaining. Laws governing the workplace are called upon to reconcile the demands of economic competitiveness with respect for personal dignity, accommodation of difference, protection of health and safety, fair distribution of gains in prosperity, and protection of the least advantaged.

Historically, the challenge of reconciling these often conflicting aims and exigencies has moved labour and employment law to the forefront of legal innovation. It was one of the first branches of law to make widespread use of alternative dispute resolution, empowering private parties to negotiate and apply norms serving not only their own needs but also the public interest. Today new social, economic and legal developments once again pose daunting challenges to policy makers, practitioners and academics in Ontario and across the country: Constitutionalization of Labour Law

• Through the gradual incorporation of international labour jurisprudence into Canadian law, the meaning of freedom of association under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is being significantly expanded, a constitutional right to collective bargaining has begun to take shape, and the advent of a constitutional right to strike has become a clear possibility. This growing acceptance of the right to a collective voice in the workplace may act as a limited

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judicial counterweight to the decline in private sector collective bargaining that has been underway for the past few decades.

Human rights in the workplace

• Human rights law requires employers to make extensive efforts to accommodate certain protected personal characteristics, up to the point of undue hardship.

Pressures on access to justice

• The administration of labour and employment law has come under pressure from growing case loads and increasing legal complexity, leading lawyers and policy makers to reconsider accepted models of legal administration and access to justice.

Globalization and the new economy

• More and more Canadians are in part-time, temporary or contract-based jobs that ‘fall through the cracks’ of protective legislation. Many analysts are asking whether the employment relationship is still the right policy platform to provide income security for workers and households.

• Accelerating domestic and world-wide competitive pressures are forcing many employers to insist on more flexibility from their workforces, and to manage their human resources as efficiently as possible.

• Coverage under pension plans, catastrophic drug prescription plans and dental plans is shrinking as employers come to grips with increasing cost pressures.

• Growing inequality in wages and job security, and the difficulties unions now face in organizing employees in the private sector, call into question the ability of traditional labour laws to achieve their historical purpose of balancing workplace fairness and economic efficiency.

• Enterprise restructuring and insolvency have caused many employers to default on or bring to an end a range of obligations to their workers.

• Problems with an exclusively shareholder-centred approach to corporate governance have reopened the question of the appropriate balance between the rights of shareholders and other corporate constituents, including employees.

• Global competitive pressures have driven governments, employers, unions and non-governmental organizations to innovations in international labour law and practice: the rapid emergence of transnational corporate codes of conduct, the adoption of trade-related labour agreements, and the importation of international legal norms into domestic labour and employment law.

• Changes in immigration policy have brought more temporary migrant workers into Canada. A range of factors, including their immigration status, often poses particular challenges for these workers.

• Canadian workers increasingly work abroad, raising complex questions about the applicability of Canadian and foreign laws.

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Demographic changes

• Demographic trends, especially the vastly increased participation of women in the workforce, have combined to cause growing tension between work and family life. Despite such major reforms as the extension of maternity and parental leave entitlements, effective responses remain elusive.

• Canada's workforce is increasingly racially and ethnically diverse, as national population growth has come to depend upon immigration. Persons with disabilities are increasingly seeking accommodations enabling them to work in productive employment. However, recent immigrants and persons with disabilities continue to experience lower rates of employment an lower pay.

• Workforce aging has been accompanied by a rise in stress-related and other illness and disability claims. Disability regimes face increasing pressure on various fronts, including pressure to develop strategies for prevention and reintegration.

How well employers, workers, unions and policy makers respond to these challenges will have a profound impact on our social and economic well-being.

The Need for Renewed Intellectual Capacity and Leadership

Individuals trained in labour and employment law are in great demand by employers, workers, unions, governments, tribunals, and consulting services. Well-informed judgment on the part of practicing lawyers, adjudicators and policy makers is key to effective legal norms and dispute resolution systems. Law schools must prepare them to face the often unpredictable challenges posed by the developments outlined above. Sound research and a well-developed curriculum are needed to ground effective policy debate, administrative reform and community outreach initiatives, and to support innovative thinking on current and emerging legal issues.

Effective research into the complex systemic challenges facing labour and employment law increasingly requires a multi-faceted and highly coordinated approach. Graduate students must be recruited and supported, networks must be built among researchers in different places and different disciplines, and research projects must be planned that will withstand intense scrutiny from granting agencies and will secure cooperation from actors in workplaces, corporate boardrooms and union halls. However, recent years have seen a decline in the capacity of universities to meet these needs. Fewer graduate students have been specializing in workplace-related law, and the number of researchers, teachers, and think tanks focused on labour and employment law has declined. In the early 1980s there were at least 19 full-time labour and employment law academics in Ontario law schools; today there are about 10. It may be fair to say that no Canadian law faculty has enough full-time faculty in this field to mount a coordinated program of research on its own. The causes of the shift of intellectual resources away from labour and employment law have not been systematically studied. A significant factor may lie in a widespread public

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perception that the problems this field of law was originally designed to address are now less important than they used to be. Moreover, some of the “labour problems” that are thought to be most pressing today, such as work-life balance, growing poverty and economic insecurity, and the acceleration of global competitive pressures, are quite resistant to traditional labour and employment law approaches. Coming to grips with these problems calls for a rethinking of the role of traditional approaches vis-à-vis the role of other areas of regulation, including social security schemes, insolvency and pensions, in bringing about a fair and efficient distribution of risks and benefits among workers and employers. This rethinking of the form that workplace regulation will take (and should take) over the next few decades is still at a very early stage, among academics as well as among practitioners and policymakers. Despite the uncertainties about what lies ahead for labour and employment law, it remains a vibrant and dynamic area of practice, and the demand for graduating students is very strong. However, the declining resources of law schools in that field, and concerns about its future, have combined to reduce the number of students who are drawn to it while they are in university, and thus the number who intend to move into it after graduation. In addition, Canadian law students have thus far tended to look mainly to American law schools for graduate training, and the much sharper decline of labour and employment law in the United States has undoubtedly acted as a further brake on advanced study in the field. The broader university environment has also changed. General government funding no longer meets the need for innovative research and curriculum development. Queen’s Law draws extensively upon the direct engagement of leading practitioners and policy makers, and faculty members look increasingly to research networks and granting agencies for the financial resources and other support needed for leading-edge inquiry. To begin the intellectual renewal of labour and employment law, it will be necessary to:

• Increase the number of JD students and graduate students drawn to labour and employment law and other workplace-related fields of law, by offering intellectually and financially attractive conditions of study;

• Identify and communicate, through teaching and research, the great significance of labour and employment law to the well-being of Canadians;

• Seek to build strong and diverse inter-university research networks to plan and carry out sophisticated projects and to obtain the funding needed for them.

Attaining these goals requires us to draw on the insights and advice of practitioners and policy makers. It also requires us to secure extensive financial support from the private and not-for-profit sectors, in order to meet resource requirements that cannot be met by public funding.

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4. Strengths and Challenges

Strengths

1. A record of national leadership

For many reasons, Queen's Law is particularly well-positioned to address the need for more and better teaching and research in labour and employment law:

• Queen's has long been a national leader in this field, both in the law faculty

and in the Industrial Relations unit of the School of Policy Studies. • Professor Kevin Banks and Emeritus Professors Bernie Adell and Don Carter

have broad and deep expertise both in traditional aspects of labour and employment law and in newer areas such as international and comparative labour law and the impact of the new economy

• Queen’s Law faculty members now play a key role in bringing out leading labour and employment publications, including the Canadian Labour and Employment Law Journal and the national casebook used in most Canadian law schools. This facilitates the extensive nation-wide contact with academics and scholarly practitioners that will be needed for an effective research network.

• In July 2010, Queen’s Law offered for the first time an intensive masters-level course in comparative labour law at Queen’s University’s Bader International Studies Centre, located at Herstmonceux Castle in southern England. Professor Adell designed and coordinated the course, which was taught by several of the most eminent British and European labour law scholars. A number of senior and mid-career Canadian labour law and industrial relations practitioners attended the course, have evaluated it very favourably, and have urged that it be offered again in later years. The course has helped to develop ties between Queen’s Law and leading academics in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe.

• Queen's Law has very strong teachers and researchers in cognate areas of law that increasingly affect the workplace, including constitutional law, administrative law, corporate law and corporate governance, international trade law, immigration law and public health law. It also has outstanding strength in cross-disciplinary analytical approaches that are essential to an in-depth understanding of workplace law, including law and economics, law and philosophy, and gender analysis (through the Feminist Legal Studies Queen’s research group).

• Other faculties at Queen's University have great strength in disciplines that are cognate to labour and employment law, including labour economics, human resource management and business administration.

• Queen's Law has close and long-standing links to the Queen's Master of Industrial Relations program. A joint JD/MIR degree program, unique to Queen’s, has been in operation for more than a decade. It facilitates inter-disciplinary study and scholarship, and it allows students to integrate academic and practical work through term-length placements in leading law

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firms and in other offices that practice labour and employment law. Queen's Law also offers a joint JD/MA in economics and a joint JD/Master of Business Administration.

• Queen’s Law has its own well-established LLM program, and has recently instituted a PhD program. The Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace will help to attract top graduate students to those programs.

2. Balance, credibility and capacity to engage the profession

The Centre has an Advisory Committee which represents a wide and balanced range of perspectives on workplace law. This committee will provide invaluable guidance, and will enhance the Centre’s credibility with external stakeholders.

3. Forward-looking focus

The Centre takes a broad and forward-looking approach to its field of study, positioning it to address the ever-closer interaction between traditional labour and employment law and such other fields of regulation as the law of corporate governance, bankruptcy law, immigration law, constitutional law and social security law. 4. A unique response to recognized needs The need for more and better labour law teaching and scholarship, and the role of law faculties in filling that need, are increasingly recognized by practitioners and policy makers, and it is widely understood that faculties of law have an important role to play in addressing those needs. No other Canadian law school has a centre dedicated to labour and employment law, and it is very likely that scholars across the country will participate in a Queen's-led research network which offers synergies and support and which provides an opportunity to reverse the long-term decline in research and teaching capacity in this field. Within Queen's University itself, there is a high level of interest in participating in the Centre's work, not only among law faculty members but also in other disciplines, including industrial relations and labour economics.

5. Partnership opportunities The Centre will draw upon its Advisory Committee to facilitate research partnerships and other joint activities with tribunals, community organizations, think tanks and government departments. Canada’s leading industrial relations research entity is the Centre de recherche inter-universitaire sur la mondialisation et le travail (CRIMT), which is based in the industrial relations and human resource management units at the University of Montreal and Laval University. CRIMT has a world-class program of research on the relationship between globalization and workplace relations, and it anchors a diverse international research network. Faculty members of the Queen’s

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Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace have well-established links with CRIMT, and the two organizations will collaborate as closely as possible. The legal focus of the Queen’s Centre, and its strength in the academic and professional communities in the common law provinces, will complement CRIMT’s activities.

Challenges

1. Resource limitations

A significant part of the Centre’s planning; start-up and development costs have been funded by a grant of seed money from the Law Foundation of Ontario. These funds will only last for 18 months.

In addition, the current faculty complement in labour and employment law at Queen's - one full-time faculty member, two emeritus faculty, and several adjunct teachers - is not large enough to develop a complete teaching and research program. 2. Institutional boundaries Without genuine partnership building, institutional boundaries may stand in the way of the cooperation needed to establish a national research network.

3. Defaulting to established approaches For better or worse, labour and employment law is characterized by established ways of thinking and by dominant approaches to problems. The Centre needs to be mindful of the fact that intellectual renewal requires both building upon and questioning that conventional wisdom.

5. Approach

The Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace will provide leadership in the intellectual renewal of labour and employment law as a field of study, practice and policy, by:

• Facilitating high-quality research on emerging problems in labour and

employment law; • Educating the next generation of leading practitioners, teachers and scholars;

and • Actively exchanging knowledge with those who have a stake in improving this

area of law.

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The Centre will aim to provide an intellectual home for the labour and employment law community, in Ontario and nationally. It will be committed to a diversity of perspectives, to multipartism, and to open and innovative inquiry.

Providing leadership

To be able to provide leadership for the intellectual renewal of the field, the Centre must develop and maintain each of the following:

• High-quality research and education on issues of contemporary significance,

responsive to important emerging issues as they arise; • Active knowledge mobilization and exchange, making it a central hub nationally

and internationally; • A capacity for excellent graduate legal education; • Partnership initiatives with other universities and organizations sharing the aims

of the Centre; • Inclusivity and balance, which are key to the Centre's credibility and to its

capacity to identify and generate fully informed perspectives on emerging issues.

Generating critical mass

In order to generate the critical mass needed to contribute effectively to intellectual renewal, the Centre must:

• Create synergies between teaching, research and knowledge exchange; • Build a research network inside and beyond Queen's; and • Set thematic priorities that will make full use of complementary resources within

Queen's Law and elsewhere.

Building partnerships Ensuring active participation by external faculty members in the Centre’s research network will require a careful balance between leadership from Queen's Law and respect for the independence and visible recognition the contributions of of researchers at other universities.

Careful priority setting The Centre has to set its priorities carefully, to avoid the danger of trying to do too much and the opposite danger of unduly limiting its aspirations.

Meeting the funding challenge

Over the next three years, fundraising will include an active campaign to solicit private donations to cover many of the Centre’s future costs. Individuals, law firms, unions, employers, employer organizations, foundations and governments will be approached as appropriate.

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Applications will be made to granting councils for funds to support research projects and the development of research networks and tools for information sharing and dissemination.

Given its reliance on external funding, the Centre requires appropriate checks and balances. The Faculty will remain steadfast in its commitment to its scholarly mission. The Advisory Committee needs to remains balanced and diverse in its composition, and vigourous in the performance of its functions.

Succession planning and capacity building

The Centre has to be especially mindful of succession planning, in light of its current reliance on a small number of key faculty and staff members, including emeritus faculty. Queen’s Law will ensure that in-kind support to the Centre is maintained and renewed as necessary, and will seek to raise funds to endow a chair in labour and employment law. This will permit the recruitment and retention of a leading scholar, to enhance the capacity to support the mission of the Centre.

Advisory Committee members will draw on their network of contacts to ensure that the Committee remains balanced and highly engaged in the future.

6. Goals, Objectives and Performance Measures

Contingent on obtaining sufficient resources, the Centre will aim to reach the following goals and objectives within 3 years of its initiation of operations.

A. Leading research

Objectives

The Centre will anchor an interdisciplinary network of researchers within and outside Queen's. Network members will be drawn from Queen's Law, from other law faculties, from cognate academic units at Queen’s such as the Department of Economics and the Industrial Relations unit in the School of Policy Studies, and from other institutions. The Centre will support that network by: • Providing institutional administrative, logistical, data access, organizational and

research support to help develop, fund an implement research projects • Providing a forum for bringing diverse disciplinary perspectives to bear; • Providing the opportunity to present papers at Centre workshops, conferences

and visiting speaker series; • Helping to disseminate research findings in other ways; • Supporting partnerships with industry, labour, not-for-profit, community and

government organizations.

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The network will encourage coordinated research on the complex systemic challenges facing labour and employment law. It will enhance the capacity to support graduate students and to plan sophisticated and workable projects that will withstand intense scrutiny from granting agencies.

Appendix A sets out a range of labour and employment law issues which, in the view of the Advisory Committee, call for scholarly inquiry. In consultation with the Advisory Committee, the Centre will identify a few of these issues as thematic priorities, and will review them regularly.

Performance Measures • A coordinated network of strong researchers will have been set up, a focused

research plan will have been put in place, the first significant publications will have appeared, and research grants will have been obtained to support further projects.

• The Advisory Committee will be providing regular input into the setting and implementing of the research agenda.

• The first of a series of periodic conferences will have been held, featuring high-quality presentations and extensive interaction.

• Funding will be in place to provide research assistance, administrative and technological support to the network.

• The Centre will have access to appropriate means of publishing its research, through research grants or private donations.

B. Educating the next generation of teachers and leading practitioners

Objectives

1. Curriculum development

On the advice of its Advisory Committee, the Centre will regularly review course offerings at Queen's Law and will pursue new curricular initiatives, which include workshops, specialized or intensive courses, and the development of teaching modules on the workplace implications of other areas of law. The Centre will aim to ensure that the Queen's Law curriculum:

• Has the breadth and depth to address the issues of greatest significance to

today's and tomorrow's workplaces; • Is multidisciplinary and pluralistic, responding to the diverse needs of students

who expect to represent employees, unions and employers; • Concerns itself with problem-solving skills, such as relationship building and

social dialogue; and with practice norms such as collegiality, civility and professionalism;

• Exposes students to work by the best scholars from Canada and abroad, through a visiting speakers series and a faculty visitors program.

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2. Graduate Program

The Centre will support a high quality, research-intensive program of graduate study, by:

• Offering scholarship support and research assistanceships; • Providing opportunities for joint and interdisplinary supervision; • Providing teaching experience and the opportunity to develop teaching skills, with

the help of the Queen's Centre for Teaching and Learning; • Providing the opportunity to participate in an active research network; • Offering distinctive learning opportunities in the form of workshops, conferences,

visiting speakers, and an enhanced curriculum; and • Helping students obtain funding from granting councils.

3. Making education available to the professional community

The Centre will aim to develop courses accessible to members of the professional community, and to qualified students from other law schools. To this end, it will consider:

• Offering part-time LL.M. studies • Increasing the number of single-credit or intensive courses • Making greater use of videoconferencing technology.

4. Demonstrating the payoffs

Through its Career Services office, Queen’s Law will help students make contact with of its graduates who are working in labour and employment law, and with other Queen’s alumni in related fields.

Performance measures

On the advice of the Advisory Committee, proposals for curriculum change will have been presented to the Queen’s Law curriculum committee.

• A distinguished visitor workshop course will have been established and funded. • Funding will be in place to provide research assistance for course development. • At least one graduate student or post-doctoral fellow will have been enrolled

annually. • Attractive scholarship support will have been made available. • Members of research network will available to participate in graduate student

supervision. • Teacher training support will be available to graduate students. • Feasible options will be in place for educating non-standard and mid-career

students.

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• Contacts with alumni in the field will be available to students through the Career Services office.

C. Active outreach and knowledge exchange

Objectives

In addition to making education available to the wider profession (see above), the Centre will endeavour to:

• Hold, co-sponsor and actively promote regular conferences and debates on

issues of importance in major centres, on a rotating basis; • Open and promote its visiting speakers series to members of the profession and

the general public; • Build an attractive and informative web site; • Make use of videolink and web dissemination to make conferences and lectures

broadly accessible; • Draw upon the Advisory Committee for help in arranging for visiting speakers

from the professional community, and in facilitating knowledge exchange with employers, unions, government departments and other stakeholders;

• Make research by members of the Centre's research network accessible to the wider labour and employment law community and to the general public, through the internet and other means of publication;

• In due course, enter into research and knowledge exchange partnerships (including technical assistance arrangements) with not-for-profit organizations, with a view to enhancing access to justice and helping to improve labour and employment law systems in Canada and abroad.

Performance Measures

• High-quality conferences and visitors series will have been planned in

consultation with the Advisory Committee and held in major centres on a rotating basis.

• An informative web site will have established and regularly updated. • Research produced by the Centre will have been published on the web. • A range of visiting speakers will have participated in Queen's Law courses. • Interaction will have been established between Centre researchers and

stakeholder organizations. • Conference and distinguished lecture series will be effectively disseminated to

the profession and the public.

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7. Follow-up: Towards a Three Year Plan of Action

On the advice of the Advisory Committee and its subcommittees, the Centre staff will seek to:

• Establish a research network • Establish and promote a conference series • Establish and use appropriate publication venues • Establish and promote a visitors series

Establish and make effective use of communications technology support, including a web page.

• Develop and present curriculum proposals • Recruit and support graduate students

The Dean, Academic Director and members of the Fundraising Subcommittee will seek to raise funds for:

• Graduate student scholarships • Sponsorship of conferences and visiting speakers series • Technological support • A named chair or professorship in labour and employment law • Research assistance and administrative support

The Academic Director and members of the research network will seek research grants to fund research assistance and administrative and technological support for the Centre's research activities and the dissemination of results.

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Appendix A

Potential Research Priorities

Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace

1. Legal responses to the changing demographics of the workforce

Key drivers of changing demographics include:

• The aging of the workforce, • The massive increase in women's participation in the labour force, • Its growing racial, ethnic and religious diversity, • The growing recognition of the rights of disabled persons to participate actively in

paid work, • Growing participation in the workforce of caregivers, • The growing integration of aboriginal workers into the mainstream of the

Canadian economy.

These factors present the following issues for workplace law:

• What are the appropriate public policies for fostering work-life balance, and what are their implications for law in the workplace?

• What can law do to advance gender equity in the workplace? • How is the law on stress-related disability developing, and where should it go? • What are the challenges to workforce integration and retention of older workers

and disabled workers, and how can the law best respond? • What are the challenges to integration and retention of aboriginal workers, and

how can the law best respond? • How are the concepts of reasonable accommodation and undue hardship

evolving, and what are their implications for the workplace? • How should pensions for baby boomer s and subsequent generations be funded,

and what are the implications for workplace law? • Does the end of mandatory requirement mean prolonged contingent employment

for young workers? If so, what should be done in the name of inter-generational equity, and what are the legal implications?

2. Legal responses to the new economy

The new economy is characterized by increased international competitive pressures, by a growing flow of migrant workers to Canada and of Canadian workers abroad, by increased volatility, and often by shorter time horizons for economic decision making. These developments raise the following issues for workplace law:

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International and transnational law • How should international labour law respond to globalization? • What is (or should be) the extraterritorial application of foreign laws in Canada,

and of Canadian laws abroad? • What are the implications for workplace law of private transnational standards,

such as those set out in by the ISO or in corporate codes of conduct? Restructuring and recovery • To what extent and in what way should wages, pensions and other employee

benefits be protected upon the insolvency or restructuring of an employer? • How can the law facilitate responses (such as work sharing programs) that will

help to avoid layoffs? Migrant workers in Canada • What are the implications of migrant worker programs and status for the

protection of migrant workers in their workplaces? What should be the role of firms, workers, and governments in ensuring equal treatment of migrants?

Contingent work • What are the appropriate public policy and legal responses to the growth of part-

time and temporary employment and own-account self-employment?

Regulating incentives in the face of shorter time horizons • How should executive compensation be structured to ensure that corporate

officers act in the long-term best interests of their firms? What role should law play in this area?

• What role, if any, should employees have in corporate governance? • How can public policy promote more investment in worker training? What are the

implications for law in the workplace?

Responding to economic volatility • What does increased volatility mean for employer-sponsored pension plans?

How should pension law respond? How should other branches of law respond? • Are platforms other than the employment relationship needed to provide access

to key benefits, such as pensions and insurance against catastrophic drug costs?

3. Privacy issues

What are the appropriate responses of workplace law to privacy issues arising from drug testing and personality testing, from the use of social media, and from security-related surveillance?

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4. Constitutionalization of labour law

• What impact will international law have on the application of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the workplace?

• How will Canadian collective bargaining law have to be reformed in the light of constitutional imperatives?

5. Enlistment of private actors for public ends: the changing roles of employers and unions

• In the aftermath of the Weber and Parry Sound cases, what is the appropriate relationship between collective bargaining, on the one hand, and tort law and public statutes on the other?

• What role should employers be expected to play in addressing the problem of violence and harassment in the workplace?

6. Access to justice and the administration of labour and employment law

• In the light of the increasing cost and complexity of legal dispute resolution and the growing problem of access to justice, in labour and employment law as in other areas, what are the appropriate roles for mediation, arbitration and tribunal and court proceedings?

• Have recent changes in the process for enforcing human rights law in Ontario and other parts of Canada been effective?