Labour & employment law column by Robert Smithson

Union members who are unhappy with the representation they’re being provided by their union will sometimes seek outside legal advice. In doing so, they should first understand the implications of taking that step and the limited role an outside lawyer may have.

Your union is your legal representative in your employment relationship. In all legal senses, it speaks on your behalf and has ultimate decision-making authority regarding matters of employment arising out of the collective agreement.

The book, “No Easy Day” by Mark Owen is a first-person account of the lead up to, and execution of, the U.S. Navy Seal mission that killed Osama Bin Laden. If there’s a lesson that story brings home, it’s that there’s only so much value to planning and that reacting effectively is the key to success.

In the spring of 2011, Owen was assigned to a highly secret operation which would train at a military base in North Carolina. Every detail of Bin Laden’s suspected compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan had been reconstructed from aerial surveillance (video and still images).

 If you carry out your work in the public eye, I think you have to expect there are going to be good times and bad times. If your name happens to be Duffy, Wallin, Dix, or Ford, you’ve likely had better weeks than the last few.

The news media, whether on the airwaves or in print or online, is abuzz with discussion of the fates and fortunes of these public figures. Though, as is sometimes the case, I wonder whether the discussion may be missing some key points.

“Thrown out with all the rusted, tangled, dented goddamn miseries.” Jann Arden’s lyric came to mind as I read a stack of articles about the garment factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Well over 600 workers have been killed, and more are still unaccounted for. It was a senseless, reckless, negligent workplace tragedy that is just the latest in an ongoing series of such disasters in places far away where clothes are produced for stores located very nearby.