Canadian Labour Rights in Crisis: The Harper Years

Abstract

In the postwar period, a set of transient historical conditions gave rise to many of the policies that came to define modern labour legislation, constituting the crowning achievement of working class economic and political power in Europe and North America. However, the conflicting claims of capital and labour to the social product came to a head by the 1970s as profit margins began to decline across the board. Capital's opposition, previously tolerated and disguised by the relatively high living standards, intensified in the form of state-led attacks on labour's postwar gains. The class struggle from above saw the whole spectrum of extra-market protections extracted from the system by workers placed in the crosshairs of capital. While they were necessary to its reproduction, capital was inclined not to pay for any of it if it could possibly help it. Central to capital's all-out offensive was the roll back of union rights, occupational health and safety regulations, workers' compensation and unemployment insurance. In Canada, the Harper years were largely a continuation of earlier decades of this class war and retrenchment of labour legislation.