Workplace Law Without the State?

Abstract

This article forms part of a tribute to Professor Harry Arthurs on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Over the past two decades, Professor Arthurs has argued that the state’s failure to regulate to improve working conditions may stem in part from enhanced capital mobility, but also arises from what he calls a “globalization of the mind” - perceptions of globalization’s constraints on public policy that may operate somewhat independently of underlying economic realities. In Fairness at Work, a 2006 report to the Canadian federal government, Professor Arthurs argued that despite the effects of globalization and the new economy, governments had not lost their ability to reform labour and employment laws that addressed the needs of Canadian workers. However, he acknowledged following the Report that his recommendations had “sunk like a stone.” This article considers why this happened. It contends that states are more constrained by a “globalization of the mind” than by hard economic facts. On the other hand, collective bargaining does often find itself at the hard edges of economic realities. As a result, insofar as it remains a potentially progressive actor, it is the state that increasingly finds itself without labour law and without labour, rather than the other way around. The article goes on to suggest that progressives turn their attention to how democratic politics might once again envision, mobilize around and deliberate upon better alternatives for reducing inequality. But it acknowledges Professor Arthurs’ concerns that our current democratic politics may not be capable of grasping the need for and acting upon new social and economic policies that could reduce inequality.