Preface

• Pages: 25-27

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Preface

This is the latest edition of a book initially published in  as the rst Canadian law school

casebook prepared by a national group of academics — the Labour Law Casebook Group.

Labour and employment law has evolved considerably over the decades, and the book has

changed accordingly. Beginning with the fourth edition in , we moved away from an

almost exclusive focus on collective labour law, adding chapters on the individual contract

of employment and on statutory regulation, as well as an introductory chapter on the his-

torical and normative foundations of labour and employment law. The growing importance

of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and of equality issues more generally, led

to providing a greater emphasis on those subject areas in the fth edition, in . In the

sixth edition, published in , we added a nal chapter on the impact of globalization, the

liberalization of trade, and the changing role of the state. By the time the seventh edition

came out in , statutory regulation and Char ter-based jurisprudence (as exemplied by

the Supreme Court of Canada decisions in Advance Cutting and Coring, Pepsi-Cola Canada,

and Parry Soun d) had become more prominent across the entire spectrum of workplace re-

lations, and so had the consequences of the globalization of the economy. Our work on the

eighth edition convinced us that it was no longer pedagogically or logistically advisable for us

to try to deal with Charter issues in any depth in the context of the particular area of collect-

ive bargaining law to which they related (for example, the determination of employee status

or the regulation of picketing). We therefore decided to consolidate them in a new chapter,

titled “The Constitutionalization of Collective Bargaining Law.” The years following the pub-

lication of the eighth edition saw the Supreme Court decide Fraser, Meredith, Mounted Police

Association of Ontario, and Saskatchewan Federation of Labour. As a result, that chapter has

become one of the weightiest in this volume.

For this edition, we have made two structural changes. Both reect the view of casebook

group members who feel that the study of Canadian labour and employment law increas-

ingly requires a grasp of the social and economic environment changes that both shape

and challenge its dening aims, structures, boundaries, and models of governance. In light

of this, we have updated and moved our treatment of what was described in the eighth

edition as the “new economy” — but is not so new anymore and is now simply referred to

as the “Changing World of Work and Workplace Law” — from the closing to the introduc-

tory chapter. Second, reecting the growing inuence of globalization, international law,

and transnational law on Canadian workplace regulation, we have expanded and updated

our treatment of these issues, and moved them from the conclusion of the casebook to its

second chapter. Chapter  enables students and teachers to extend their consideration of

issues raised in the introduction, delving into the evolution of globalization and its impact