Employee Representation in the New World of Work:
The Dynamics of Rights, Voice, Performance and Power

47th Annual CIRA Meeting/ International CRIMT Conference
June 16-18 2010, Université Laval, Québec, Canada

Registration is now open!

Program and details of the conference at www.crimt.org/cira-crimt2010.html

The era of globalization and new information technologies has brought about significant changes in workplace configuration, workforce composition and expectations, and in the management of human resources as firms seek competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive environment. These changes pose considerable challenges to the traditional notions of employee representation, the core tenets of which were inspired in Canada under the Wagner Act exactly 75 years ago. The nature of these challenges will be fully explored and debated at an international conference to be held from 16th to 18th June 2010 at Laval University in Quebec City.

The conference is a special collaboration between the Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT) and the Canadian Industrial Relations Association (CIRA-ACRI) and will focus on a number of key issues relating to employee representation in the new world of work, including: the relevance in today’s workplace of the founding principles of different representative systems; how different types of employee representation regimes deal with issues facing the contemporary worker; the emerging models and actors for employee rights and representation; the kinds of public policy, actors, strategies, capabilities and research that are necessary to rethink employee representation in the contemporary workplace.

The conference is highly international in scope, attracting over 300 participants from more than thirty countries. Participants, who will be involved in four plenary sessions and more than 60 workshops, include internationally renowned specialist researchers and leading practitioners in the area of work and employment. As a special event, the conference will host a lecture featuring the Honourable Mr. Justice Louis LeBel of the Supreme Court of Canada. This is a bilingual conference, with simultaneous translation services in French and English available for multiple streams of the conference.