Dependent Contractors and the Ontario Labour Relations Board: Understanding the Board's Role in a Capitalist Economy

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorPilon, Dennis
dc.contributor.authorWalchuk, Bradley Peter
dc.date.accessioned2025-07-23T15:29:31Z
dc.date.available2025-07-23T15:29:31Z
dc.date.copyright2025-06-13
dc.date.issued2025-07-23
dc.date.updated2025-07-23T15:29:30Z
dc.degree.disciplinePolitical Science
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation explores the evolution and politics behind the concept of the ‘dependent contractor’ in Ontario, from its earliest incarnations in the late 1970s to its current usage in the gig economy, as interpreted and applied by the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB). It examines how the Board’s interpretation and application of dependent contractor provisions has impacted workers whose employment status falls somewhere between traditional notions of independent contractor and employee, i.e. the ‘grey area’ as the Board has referred to it, over a period of changing employment relationships and of increasingly precarious work. The research tracks these changes over time, examining how previous OLRB jurisprudence on dependent contractors can be seen to impact its decisions in more contemporary contexts (e.g Foodora, 2020) and what this might tell us about the Board’s understanding of employment relations in a changing capitalist economy. The analysis seeks to place the actions of the OLRB into a broader social context to assess what factors have influenced the Board’s decisions and gauge how it understands both its potential to address employment inequities and the limits it faces in doing so within a capitalist economy. This dissertation argues that the OLRB operated with an implicit industrial pluralist understanding of labour-capital relations and made decisions informed by that approach and, in doing so, lacked an appreciation of how capitalist workplaces were changing over time in a way that evaded control via that understanding. It further argues that while bodies such as the OLRB have some autonomy from capitalists and the capitalist state, they are unable to, nor are they designed to, overcome or dramatically alter the power imbalances that exist in capitalist civil society.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10315/43097
dc.languageen
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.
dc.subjectLabor relations
dc.subjectLaw
dc.subjectPolitical Science
dc.subject.keywordsDependent Contractors
dc.subject.keywordsOntario Labour Relations Board
dc.subject.keywordsLabour boards
dc.subject.keywordsLabour law
dc.subject.keywordsIndependent contractors
dc.titleDependent Contractors and the Ontario Labour Relations Board: Understanding the Board's Role in a Capitalist Economy
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Walchuk_Bradley_Peter_2025_PhD.pdf
Size:
1.86 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
license.txt
Size:
1.87 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
YorkU_ETDlicense.txt
Size:
3.39 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download

Collections

Political Science

All items in the YorkSpace institutional repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved except where explicitly noted.