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8432.More information
The forthcoming bicentennial of the Ontario Legislative Library makes it appropriate to highlight its history; a history that coincides with that of Upper Canada, the united Province of Canada, and Ontario. The principal services offered to the Members of the provincial legislature are also described.
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8433.
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8434.
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8435.More information
Red Judges and Labor LawUntil 1936, the relations between employers and wage-earners were not defined by a specific jurisprudence ; they were regulated, instead, by common law, except in the case of disputes. These were handled by special tribunals, the conciliation boards (conseils de prud'hommes), composed equally of elected employers and wage-earners, charged with reconciliation, rather than with judging the conflicts which might occur in this area. Recruited largely from among the small artisans and highly skilled workers (who were often militant unionists), these bodies had an unusual side, as can be seen from the simple and relatively informal settings of their meetings. A form of popular justice, the institution of the conciliation boards had a clientele consisting of workers and apprentices in the traditional economic sectors (woodworking, building trades, etc.) ; their expectations were not so much juridical in character (e.g. finding the employer guilty of some crime) as practical (e.g. recovering monies due to workers). Starting in 1936, this kind of work-related justice underwent a major transformation. Under the influence of a small group of jurists, there developed, at first, a new juridical theory in which the relations between workers and employers were analyzed less in terms of individual relations than in terms of collective relations. This theory, which was elaborated with the aid and advice of the unions, the political parties, and the law schools, was the basis of a movement for the creation of a labor law in the proper sense of the term. And since the war, this subject has become an independent branch of jurisprudence. Simultaneously, the increasing number of labor disputes between wage-earners and white-collar workers, on the one hand, and their employers, on the other hand, led to the appearance before the boards of two new personages, the union lawyer and union legal adviser. These legal specialists introduced into the tribunals, which previously were oriented toward reconciliation, a new juridical dimension, that of «stating the law». But, because of their very composition, these bodies were unable to undertake this task. The union CFTC which had little foothold in the arbitration boards, turned away from this institution and sought other ways of putting its ideas into effect, notably in the domain of the penal System. The more repressive judges then found themselves at a critical juncture and attemtped to endow their office with a new definition. The problems stemming from union disputes, which would henceforth corne before their courts, served them as an expedient and a stepping stone in the struggle they were carrying on within the judicial field itself.
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8437.