Industrial Relations

The vision of Cardus is a cooperative construction industry, building together the foundation for a revitalized sector. We think we’re onto something - a way of organizing our understanding of construction in North America that can alter the face of the industry.

Cardus has been studying bottlenecks in productivity, researching innovative solutions, and building industry relationships since the release of our first biennial study of Canadian attitudes toward unions in 1997. Since then, our research has expanded to include issues of labour market supply; effective , cooperative representation of workers; how industry associations can bring their collective expertise to bear on sector-wide challenges; and even big picture visioning of North American trade corridors.

In coordination with the Construction Sector Council we've undertaken extensive studies into the nature of labour in Canada, both local and mobile.

Ray Pennings' Competitively Working in Tomorrow’s Construction was a landmark study that opened the door into broad dialogue across the construction sector, Stepping Forward: The Face of Construction is Changing.

Our latest research on, "Why is Construction in Ontario so Expensive?" argues that the construction labour debate needs to be reframed in a “competitive labour pool” paradigm that opens up new questions and frameworks which, when followed with a subsequent data analysis, may provide suggestions for improving Ontario’s competitiveness.

Additionally Cardus has published Buying a Labour Monopoly, a comprehensive study of job targeting programs and their impact.

Read these and more of our work on industrial relations in our publications.