The Medium and the " Anti-Union " Message: " Forced Listening " and Captive Audience Meetings in Canadian Labor Law.

Abstract

In Toronto, a few city blocks from the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB), sits a small center dedicated to the work and ideas of Canada’s Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan is most well-known for his work examining communications, and his much quoted aphorism, “the medium is the message.” He argued that both the form and the content of communications are “media,” and the “message” is the “change of . . . pattern the [medium] introduces into human affairs.” The method of communication transmits its own message, which is distinct from that conveyed in the content of communications. The key to understanding the power of communication lies in recognizing the ways in which the forms of communication influence events and perceptions. This is not a paper on communications theory. But McCluhan’s framework provides a useful launching pad from which to commence a review of employer “captive audience meetings” (CAMs) in Canadian labor law. A CAM is an assembly of workers at the behest of their employer, usually occurring during working hours, and with

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