PMIR students must successfully complete 30 credits over the course of the degree to obtain their Master of Industrial Relations degree.
Students are required to take 6 core courses (worth 3 credits each for a total of 18 required credits) plus an additional 12 elective credits (1-credit skills seminar elective courses, with one 3-credit course option).
The purpose of the course is to develop a critical understanding of the institutions of unionism and collective bargaining, their rationale, policies and programs, and their effects on workers, organizations, and the society. The course will be taught in a comparative U.S./Canadian context with an emphasis on workplace change.
This course addresses the fundamentals of the law governing the individual employment relationship and the collective bargaining relationship; rights of the employee and employer at common law, and their modification by minimum standards statutes and human rights legislation; the development of contemporary collective bargaining legislation; the certification process; unfair labour practices and the duty to bargain.
This course addresses the fundamentals of the collective agreement and its administration through arbitration. The arbitration and adjudication process will also be studied, including such topics as powers of arbitrators and adjudicators and evidentiary issues. Students will have an opportunity to perform in mock arbitrations and adjudications.
This course focuses on strategic human resource management (SHRM), which involves future-oriented approaches to ensure alignment between HR practices and a broader organizational strategy. The course will cover fundamental concepts of SHRM, including the distinction between SHRM and operational HR approaches, with a particular emphasis on developing evidence-based management skills to identify and address emerging organizational issues related to talent management.
The course considers the range of human resource management and labour relations practices, laws and policies that influence equity, diversity, and inclusion in the modern workplace, and helps students develop their critical thinking on topics such as implicit and systemic bias, and how they relate to organizational issues of power, privilege, opportunity, inclusion, creativity and innovation, and effectiveness.
This course focuses on the methods used to collect, assess, and evaluate industrial relations related qualitative and quantitative data and information in a variety of contexts. Example topics covered include designing and administering workforce surveys (including interviews and focus groups), compiling, analyzing, and presenting organizational data, and analyzing labour market survey data.