Continental drift in the legal profession : the struggle for collective bargaining by Nova Scotia's Crown prosecutors

Abstract

This dissertation explores the apparent contradiction between the independence and autonomy of an elite profession and the pursuit of collective bargaining. Crown prosecutors employed in the Canadian public service bureaucracy are full members of the legal profession and also form a clearly recognized group of subordinated employees. Their need for prosecutorial independence clashes with management control in the context of dependent employment. This study examines the implications of a changing workplace and a changing profession for professional workers' choices of collective action. A case study of the Nova Scotia Crown Attorneys' Association experience and its members' struggle for collective bargaining rights forms the basis of this research. The study probes the question of how prosecutors move between two distinct strategies of labour process control and examines the implications of collective bargaining for professionalization. The research findings identify the existence of an occupational community within the broader legal profession. The occupational community reflects the marginalization of Crown prosecutors within their profession. Using narrative analysis of prosecutors' own stories of their career and labour struggles, the research reveals how this occupational community reflects the specialization and fragmentation of the profession and supports a unique work ethic and sense of professionalism among Crown prosecutors. Mobilization of prosecutors to demand bargaining rights, otherwise forbidden by law, is achieved with the use of specific language around fairness. This language has meaning and power in both a professional context as well as in the world of dependent employment, organization policy, and management decision making. An ethos of fairness enables Crown prosecutors to reconcile two competing logics of collective action, and to reclaim the benefits of professionalization eroded through dependent employment.