The state, globalization and labour law: The ideological discourse of de-regulation and the reality of re-regulation

Canada's post war labour relations regime began to undergo significant transformation in the late 1980's with the advent of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement. The rise of neo-liberal politics became integral to the concept of globalization.; The first level of analysis in this thesis examines the concepts of the state and globalization within a Marxist class analysis framework. The second level applies this analysis to the sub-state of the province of Ontario and analyzes the impact of globalization on labour laws and its utilization of a neo-liberal ideological discourse in the creation of a new social construct of de-regulation. It is argued that this new social construct was used to roll back and re-regulate the post war labour relations regime and other welfare state social gains.; Furthermore, the thesis argues that the concepts of "de-regulation", "flexibility" and "individual choice" were used to displace a pro-collective form of statutory regulation with a pro-individualistic form of market regulation in the field of labour relations during the regime of the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris.