ABSTRACT
The conduct of labor relations in Canada and the United States is typically most closely identified with the contemporary system of collective bargaining. Indeed, in the Canadian federal public service, the right of employees to form unions and engage in collective bargaining originated with the passage of the Public Service Staff Relations Act in 1967. While this represented a major turning point in federal public-service labor relations, it was, in fact, not the beginning of the formal system of industrial relations. Instead, it was a natural extension of what was then a nonunion system of labor and employment relations in the federal public service that had been in existence since the end of World War II and that had a formal arrangement for joint labor-management consultation as its centerpiece. This chapter examines the origins and development of the joint employee-employer council that afforded employees of the Canadian federal government a formal forum for joint consultation with their employer prior to the advent of unionism.
