Pluralism Or Fragmentation? the Twentieth-Century Employment Law Regime in Canada‪.‬

I. Introduction: Employment Regimes and Fragmented Labour Markets ANY ATTEMPT AT A HISTORICAL overview inevitably involves contentious choices, including those of focus, the analytic lens to deploy, and the themes that structure the narrative. The first and most controversial choice that we have made is that of focus. Our topic is the legal regulation of employment in 20th-century Canada. Despite the fact that during the 20th century employment has come to be treated as a synonym for work, these terms are not equivalent. Employment is a mere subset of the broader domain of work; it emerged as a specific legal category in England in the 19th century to specify the rights and obligations that comprised a bilateral labour market contract. Work, by contrast, captures a much broader range of productive activity, including the labour of small independent producers and women in the household. The false equivalence of the terms "employment" and "work" in the 20th century is evidence of the hegemony of the neo-classical vision of the labour market in which employment dominates.(1)