Expertise: Labour Law

De Stefano, Valerio

Professor Valerio De Stefano, PhD, joined Osgoode as a tenured professor in January 2022 and was then appointed as the inaugural Canada Research Chair in Innovation, Law and Society. From October 2017 to December 2021, he was the BOF-ZAP Research Professor of Labour Law at the Institute for Labour Law and the Faculty of Law of the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium.

Valerio De Stefano read law at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, where he obtained a master’s degree in 2006 and later received his doctoral degree (2011). At Bocconi University, he served as a postdoctoral researcher between 2011 and 2014 while also being a part-time associate in an international law firm. From 2014 to 2017, he worked as an officer of the International Labour Organization in Geneva. During his career, he was a visiting academic at the University College London (UCL), a postdoctoral member of Clare Hall College at the University of Cambridge (2013), a Distinguished Speaker for Spring 2018 at the “William C. Wefel Center for Employment Law” at Saint Louis University Law School (2018), and a Senior Fellow (Melbourne Law Masters) at the University of Melbourne (2019).

In 2018, he was awarded an Odysseus Grant from the Research Foundations – Flanders (FWO) amounting to 880,000 Euro for an interdisciplinary research project on the working conditions and labour protection of platform workers. Since 2020 he was also the principal investigator at the KU Leuven of an Horizon2020 Grant about in-work poverty.

Valerio De Stefano regularly publishes articles in major specialized academic journals. In 2016, he was the guest editor of a special issue of the Comparative Labour Law and Policy Journal on “Crowdsourcing, the Gig-Economy, and the Law”. In 2019, he was the guest editor of a special issue of the same journal on “Automation, Artificial Intelligence, and Labour Protection”. He also was the co-editor of a special issue on “Testing the ‘Personal Work’ Relation: New Trade Union Strategies for New Forms of Employment” published by the European Labour Law Journal. In 2022, with professor Antonio Aloisi, he published “Your Boss Is an Algorithm. Artificial Intelligence, Platform Work and Labour” (Hart Publishing), a monograph about algorithmic management and artificial intelligence at work.

He is the co-editor of the Dispatches Session of the Comparative Labour Law and Policy Journal and an Editorial Adviser of the International Labour Review.

Prof. De Stefano acted as a consultant for the International Labour Office, the European Parliament, Eurofound, the Joint Research Center of the EU Commission and national governments. His research is also frequently referred to by governments and international organisations, including the International Labour Organisation, the OECD, the European Commission, and the European Parliament, and has been cited by courts, parliamentary bills, policy reports, employers’ and workers’ organizations, and media worldwide.

Besides numerous academic conferences, lectures and seminars, he was invited to speak as an expert on the labour protection of new forms of work at the European Parliament, the European Social and Economic Committee, the OECD, and the Canada-EU dialogue on employment, social affairs and decent work. He is a member of the OECD’s Network of Experts on AI (One AI).

Research Interests:  Labour Law, Employment Law, Law and Technology, Artificial Intelligence and Law, Algorithmic Management, Artificial Intelligence and Work, Digitalisation and Society, Platform Work, Non-Standard Employment, International and Comparative Labour law.

 

Smith, Adrian A.

Professor Adrian Smith joined the Osgoode Hall Law School faculty in July 2018 as Associate Professor and will serve a term as Academic Director of Parkdale Community Legal Services (PCLS), teaching the intensive seminar in poverty law.  He arrives from Carleton University’s Department of Law and Legal Studies where he enjoyed cross-appointment to the Institute of Political Economy and the Institute of African Studies.  Prior to his appointment in 2011, he completed a Bachelor of Arts (BA, Honours) in Political Science and History at Western, a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) and Master of Laws (LLM) at Osgoode, and doctoral studies at McGill Faculty of Law, for which he received a SSHRC ‘CGS’ Doctoral Scholarship.

His areas of interest broadly relate to law, political economy and development.  He researches the regulation of labour in colonial and settler colonial contexts, including temporary labour migration in Canada.  He also has interests in popular legal education in social movements, anti-imperialism, anti-racism, and visual legal studies — among other areas.  His research projects have taken him to northern Africa, western Europe, South America, the Caribbean, Australia, Mexico and throughout the U.S. and Canada.  He has been privileged to work with youth environmental justice activists from Aamjiwnaang First Nation, near Sarnia’s Chemical Valley, and has undertaken research in relation to renewable energy in the territory of Batchewana First Nation, near Sault Ste. Marie.  He is a researcher in the SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, “Reconciling Sovereignties: New Techniques for ‘Authorizing’ Extraction on Indigenous Territories” in partnership with the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade (INET) and Mining Watch Canada (led by Professor Shiri Pasternak).

Professor Smith’s work can be found in a range of journals and edited collections.  He is co-editor of Unfree Labour? Struggles of Migrant and Immigrant Workers in Canada (PM Press, with Professor Aziz Choudry).

While at Carleton, Professor Smith taught Regulating Work in the Global Economy, Settler Colonialism and Belonging In Canada (Research Methods), Historical Perspectives on Law and Society, Law and Development, and Labour Law.  For two years he also co-taught the core doctoral seminar in political economy.  Following his term at PCLS, he will teach labour law.

Professor Smith is a youth basketball coach, with Toronto Triple Threat Basketball Club and Ontario Basketball’s Summer Development and Centre for Performance (CP) Programs.

Research Interests: regulation of labour, law and development, critical political economy approaches to law, temporary labour migration, racism, settler colonialism, social movements and law.

Tucker, Eric M.

Professor Eric Tucker has been teaching at Osgoode Hall Law School since 1981 and served as Graduate Program Director from 1998 to 2001. He has published extensively in the fields of occupational health and safety regulation and labour and employment law. Professor Tucker has been involved in law reform initiatives through his participation on the boards of Ontario community clinics focused on occupational health and safety and workers compensation.  He was a co-investigator on a partnership grant with the Workers’ Action Centre examining the enforcement of employment standards in Ontario.  He has co-authored a study of the legal definition of employment for the Law Commission of Canada, a study of reproductive hazards in the workplace for the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies and a study of employment standards complaints and their resolution for the Changing Workplaces Review.  He has acted as an expert witness for unions challenging the constitutionality of legislation that excludes or limits workers’ rights.  He has authored or co-authored Closing the Enforcement Gap: Improving Employment Standards Protections for People in Precarious Jobs (with Leah Vosko and others); Self-Employed Workers Organize: Law, Policy and Unions (with Cynthia Cranford, Judy Fudge, and Leah Vosko) (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005); Labour Before the Law: Workers’ Collective Action and the Canadian State, 1900-1948 (with Judy Fudge) (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Administering Danger in the Workplace: The Law and Politics of Occupational Health and Safety Regulation in Ontario, 1850-1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).  He has also edited or co-edited a number of volumes including, The Class Politics of Law (with Judy Fudge); Canadian State Trials, Volume 4: War Measures and the Repression of Radicalism, 1914‐39 (with Barry Wright and Susan Binnie), Property on Trial (with Bruce Ziff and James Muir) and Working Disasters: The Politics of Recognition and Response.

Slinn, Sara

Sara Slinn joined the Osgoode faculty in 2007, after five years at Queen’s Faculty of Law. Professor Slinn’s research interests are in the areas of labour and employment law, focusing on different approaches and impediments to collective employee representation, and the intersection of Charter rights and labour law. Reflecting her interdisciplinary graduate work, including a PhD in Industrial Relations from the University of Toronto, Professor Slinn’s research is interdisciplinary and uses empirical methods of analysis. She has also practised labour and employment law with both the British Columbia Labour Relations Board and a private law firm in Vancouver.Research Interests: Labour Law, Employment Law, Industrial Relations, Constitutional Law, Contracts