The Faces of Coercion: The Legal Regulation of Labor Conflict in Ontario, 1880–1889

Abstract

Until recently, North American labor law historiography has been dominated by the view that the legal regime regulating trade unions and collective bargaining has passed through three stages of development: repression, toleration, and promotion. This evolutionary narrative served the function of justifying current collective bargaining schemes by showing them to be the progressive realization of political and industrial pluralism. Confidence in the narrative, however, is eroding. In part, this is fuelled by the crisis of the current collective bargaining regime. It no longer appears to be able to deliver the goods. Not coincidentally, critical scholars have also chosen this moment to scrutinize the Whiggish history produced by writers committed to the Wagner Act model and have found it wanting.