Collective Representation and Bargaining for Self-Employed Workers: Final Report
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This report seeks to identify and discuss feasible models for collective representation and bargaining for self-employed contractors in the federal jurisdiction. The term “self-employed contractors” refers to workers who would be classified as “independent contractors” under the Canada Labour Code (CLC) Part I and, consequently, be excluded from the ambit of CLC collective representation and bargaining provisions. The study utilizes fieldwork, in the form of interviews and focus group discussions, in four sectors of interest, namely, road transportation, broadcast media, technology, and telecommunications, in order to explore and assess potential models for statutory collective representation and bargaining for self-employed workers. At the outset, the report provides necessary background for the models sought to be tested through fieldwork by delineating freedom of association obligations under the Canadian Charter and international labour law and outlining key approaches or models by categorizing them along a continuum from collective representation to collective bargaining. The literature reviewed includes research on the capacity and activities of non-union organizations as well as theories and findings pertaining to the propensity and needs of workers to organize. The report, with respect to each sector of interest, identifies fundamental features of organization of work by self-employed workers that are relevant to collective representation and bargaining. It also examines the degree of unionization of each sector, with a specific emphasis on self-employed workers, and applies relevant theories of organizing propensity to theoretically evaluate the possibility of self-employed workers in the sector organizing. Moreover, the report sheds light upon cross-sectoral considerations relevant to organizing, including confusion pertaining to the applicability of federal jurisdiction, the perceived prevalence of misclassifying employees or dependent contractors as independent contractors, conflict of interests amongst workers, and the accentuated vulnerability of recent immigrants and foreign workers, whilst pointing out the limited capacity of non-union organizations to engage in collective representation or bargaining on behalf of self-employed workers. Additionally, the report also outlines six potential statutory models to facilitate collective representation and bargaining for self-employed workers in the four sectors of interest: (i) CLC Extension Model, which applies the provisions of CLC Part I to self-employed workers, (ii) Sectoral Bargaining Model, which establishes a sectoral bargaining system that allows the “most representative” association to bargain a sector-wide minimum standards agreement operating in parallel with the CLC, (iii) Bernier Model, under which worker associations may seek certification for one of three forms of workplace representation, namely, individual representation in relation to individual workplace matters, workplace consultation and information rights, and collective bargaining, whilst gradually advancing along this gradation; (iv) Sectoral Standard-Setting Model, under which the representatives of self-employed workers and employers would negotiate, with government representative participation, minimum standards, which would be incorporated into enforceable regulations after being accepted by the government; (v) Worker Forum Model, which provides for individual representation at the workplace level and collective representation at the sectoral level, and (vi) Protection for Collective Activity Model, which makes CLC unfair labour practice protection and relevant remedies applicable to self-employed workers so as to cover both organizing and non-organizing activity insofar as it is collective and pertains to workplace concerns. Lastly, the report, based on this analysis, provides recommendations for each of the sectors of interest.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.016 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".