North American industrial relations: divergent trends in Canada and the United States

During the past 20 years many firms in the United States have pursued, with government acquiescence, policies of de-unionisation, even where collective bargaining was well established; of active union avoidance so as to remain free of its rigours; or of replacing the old adversarialism by new co-operative relations. These trends, said by some to amount to a transformation of American industrial relations, are much weaker in Canada. Canadian employers have been reluctant to follow suit partly because of tougher union opposition, but mainly because of government insistence that the "rules of the game' established in the 1940's - the Labour Accord common to both countries - be respected. Government behaviour here owes much to the partisan political strategy of the Canadian labour movement. -Author