University of Toronto Law Union
presents
Workplace democracy, migrant labour, and movement lawyering
March 12, 2021
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM
While food banks can’t keep up with the demand, homeless encampments mushroom, and evictions continue with impunity, Canada’s top billionaires are $37 billion richer since start of the pandemic. Decades of austerity, economic deregulation, and State support of management have kept workers and worker organizations on their back feet. In the face of global catastrophe, disaster capitalists have continued consolidating power and capital, profiteering off front-line workers in grocery stores and care homes. COVID-19 further fragmented workplaces, exacerbated economic inequality, and laid bare the gross inequities latent in the neoliberal State.
Despite the immense hurdles they face, workers continue to resist exploitation and seek self-determination by coming together and demanding justice.
The University of Toronto Law Union (UTLU) looks forward to discussing organizing, agitating, and litigating in support of workplace justice. John No, Ryan White, and Dr. Vasanthi Venkatesh will address their roles supporting worker organizing and activism in the face of increasing antagonism from management and the State. The discussion will tie together unionizing in the gig economy, justice for migrant workers, and the role lawyers play in building and supporting working-class organizations.
The panel continues our semester-long series of discussions on movement lawyering. Movement lawyering is the practice of law with the understanding that grassroots activism and organizing drives fundamental change, not isolated legal victories. Movement lawyers work to support communities fighting injustice, allowing those most harmed by overlapping forms of oppression to lead the fight for transformative change. In our movement lawyering event series, we seek to explore these questions: what is movement lawyering and why is it necessary? How should lawyers work with grassroots organizers? How can movement lawyers help communities build power? How can lawyers fail social movements, and what lessons do those failures teach us? How do legal strategies fit alongside other social change strategies? How can we bridge the disconnect between conventional legal training and the skills needed to support social movements?
We hope these conversations help students appreciate the reality of progressive legal work. By hearing from practitioners whose work reflects the principles of movement lawyering, these conversations allow law students to understand the unique issues facing lawyers whose work supports grassroots activism.
Speaker Bios:
Dr. Vasanthi Venkatesh
Dr. Vasanthi Venkatesh is Assistant Professor in Law, Land, and Local Economies at the University of Windsor, Faculty of Law. Professor Vasanthi Venkatesh’s research focuses on immigration and citizenship law, law and social movements, comparative human rights law, and property and labour. Her expertise lies in the interdisciplinary study of law within its political, economic, global, and historical contexts. It is informed by critical class, race, and feminist theories as well as post-colonial scholarship and uses empirical, comparative, and historical methods.
John No
John No is a Community Lawyer Group Lead at Parkdale Community Legal Services. John's practice focuses on workers’ rights. In 2020, John represented a migrant worker who sued their employer for firing him for speaking out about health and safety issues at his workplace amid a COVID-19 outbreak.
Ryan White
Ryan is the co-leader of Cavalluzzo's construction labour law practice group. Ryan joined Cavalluzzo as an associate in 2009 after summering and articling with the firm. His practice areas include labour relations and construction law. Ryan represented CUPW and Foodosters United in the Foodora unionization campaign.
Registration required:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/workplace-democracy-migrant-labour-and-movement-lawyering-tickets-142737239927
