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Page 6 February 9, 2015 • Law Times www.lawtimesnews.com COMMENT ABS in the spotlight ith the campaign for the Law Society of Upper Canada bencher elections set to begin with the deadline for nominations on Feb. 13, the regulator already has one- high profile candidate seeking a seat at the governing table: Toronto lawyer Joe Groia. It's a provocative move by Groia given his ongoing disciplinary battle with the law society over the civility issue. If he becomes a bencher, there certainly could be some awkward situations as he and the regulator continue to litigate at the Ontario Court of Appeal and, potentially, beyond. His candidacy is welcome, however, given his unique experience at the centre of the civility debate. While the regulator has disci- plined him, the issue wasn't over his competence as a lawyer or any wrongdoing against clients. Rather, the case is about the difficult question of where to draw the line between lawyers' duties as officers of the court and their obligations to fearlessly represent their clients. As the election gets underway, Groia is right about one thing: there are other priorities at stake besides the civility issue. Cer- tainly, alternative business structures will be a key question for the regulator in the coming months. Already, of course, we've seen or- ganizations such as the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association coming out strongly against alternative business structures. Some personal injury lawyers say they won't do anything for access to justice and suggest they'll merely create an opening for conglomerates to insert themselves into their field and take over law firms. Another perspective came in a recent submission to the law Ontario labour laws in need of an update ould anyone like some beer? Summer and suds time may be just a glint on the horizon, but at the Crown Holdings Inc. beer-can manufacturing plant in north- west Toronto, trouble has been brewing for a while. There, 120 members of the United Steelworkers Local 9176 have been on legal strike for 17 months and are promoting a boycott of buying beer in cans. The union says the company provoked the workers into a strike. Crown Hold- ings has 21,335 employees in 40 plants around the world with four of them here in Canada. Crown Holdings is profitable and its chairman and chief executive of- ficer, John Conway, raked in $16.4 mil- lion in 2012, down from $19.3 million in 2011. Clearly, the company isn't hurting and it's due in a large part to the partner- ship with its employees in turning its operations into a profit centre. The union says the company made progressively worse wage offers during contract negotiations in 2013 after a nine- year wage freeze. The breaking point was the demand to cut wages by 30 per cent and institute a two-tier pay structure that would see new workers earn 42-per-cent less on average at $12 an hour. The com- pany has also said it will only hire back certain workers if and when the strike ends, naming union stal- warts as those to lose their jobs. In a depressed provincial economy, Crown Holdings clearly thinks it holds all of the cards and there's already a precedent with U.S. giant Caterpillar Inc. shuttering its locomotive plant in London, Ont., when workers refused a 50-per-cent wage cut from $35 an hour in 2012. Beer cans and other alumi- num packaging are a local niche, how- ever. It doesn't make economic or envi- ronmental sense to manufacture them in Mexico and ship them back to beer producers in Ontario. Crown Holdings has brought in re- placement workers, a polite term for what trade unionists call scabs, and that's the issue here. Why extend the strikers' misery when both parties have exhausted their rem- edies and it has become a war of attrition? To that point, the union's Mark Row- linson says the labour movement is lob- bying the Ontario government to take a fresh look at the Ontario Labour Rela- tions Act and add an anti-replacement worker clause as part of a general review and revamp. "It has been changed for years since they were first elect- ed in 2003 and premier Mc- Guinty removed most of the changes brought in by the Mike Harris government," he says. High on the wish list is an anti- replacement worker clause or at least something that would trigger a requirement for both parties to enter into arbitration once they reached a defined milestone in a lockout or strike. "There was anti-scab legislation in place under Bob Rae's government in 1990 or so," says Rowlinson. "That was removed by Harris." Protecting workers' jobs is tanta- mount in any strike or lockout, he says, and several jurisdictions have such mea- sures in place, notably British Columbia and Quebec. "The other option is the so-called Manitoba legislation which requires man- datory interest arbitration after 60 days of a lockout or strike," says Rowlinson. Without protections for striking or locked-out workers, the union is at a dis- advantage and the company is under no real pressure to resolve the impasse. While there have been private me mbers' bills seeking to add a replace- ment-worker clause, nothing has pro- gressed. But the right to organize and negotiate a collective agreement is part of the fabric of Canadian society, says Rowlinson, suggesting basic protections should also extend to provincial labour laws, especially in light of recent Su- preme Court of Canada decisions. "At the end of January, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the right to strike as constitutionally protected and before that on Jan. 15 with the RCMP decision which upheld the right to organize." With a budget looming, it's doubt- ful this government will find the band- width to look at the labour legislation before the summer. The economic reality is that with an 80-cent dollar, Ontario needs labour peace to power a vibrant manufacturing sector to drive the economy even as the energy sector sinks. But at the same time, we can't afford to give up living wages that in turn generate much-needed tax revenues and trigger consumer spending. LT uIan Harvey has been a journalist for more than 35 years writing about a di- verse range of issues including legal and political affairs. His e-mail address is ianharvey@rogers.com. ©2015 Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or stored in a retrieval system without written per- mission. 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The submission noted there has already been lots of change in insurance defence with different types of providers taking on various aspects of the work and suggested that while the organization doesn't oppose innovation in the delivery of legal services, issues such as the risk of marginalizing lawyers into technicians, the sustainability of law practices, and evaluating the loss of independence and conf lict of interest should be among the considerations. It's a mea- sured perspective and a welcome addition to a debate all bencher candidates should be ready to engage in and offer their stance on. — Glenn Kauth W Queen's Park Ian Harvey W

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