Far from instituting a worker’s state, labour under Alberta’s NDP saw the government pursue wage containment and strike avoidance, often in the process undermining their own union supporters. Why is it that a supposed left-wing government prided itself on delivering zero-percent increases to public sector unions? How did the NDP’s failure to take on the fossil fuel industry make them look weak and hypocritical?

Nick Driedger joins Team Advantage to discuss his latest piece for online publication Organizing Work, entitled “The Ugly Reality of Unions under Social Democracy.”
Read it here: https://organizing.work/2019/10/the-ugly-reality-of-unions-under-social-democracy/

Check out Organizing Work and the WOBcast at https://organizing.work

What’s the logic behind “chasing the centre” as an electoral strategy, and why is it no longer holding up in the age of populism? Why is the strategy of targeting swing voters no longer the key to winning elections? Team Advantage assembles to examine the Median Voter Theorem, assess its assumptions, and explain why this model is failing.

This episode features audio from an Alberta NDP election ad, posted April 3rd, 2019.

Alberta’s minimum wage is now “frozen,” which means it will slowly be eroded by inflation. How many minimum- or low-wage workers are there in Alberta, and what do they look like? Joel French, Executive Director of Public Interest Alberta, joins Team Advantage to examine the consequences of the wage freeze, consider who’s affected, discuss the realities of low-wage housing, and think on what to do about that pesky 1%.

Twitter: @JoelFrench and @PIAlberta
Read PIA’s report here.
Read the CCPA’s report on rental housing here.
Read about the 1% doing really great here.

Martin Lukacs joins Team Advantage to discuss his new book, The Trudeau Formula: Seduction and Betrayal in an Age of Discontent. How does Trudeau represent a rehabilitation of capitalism’s image after the Harper years? What has been the purpose of Trudeau’s “reconciliation industry?” How does Trudeau understand popular struggle? And last but not least, what happened with the LEAP manifesto during the 2016 Federal NDP convention in Edmonton?

Purchase Martin’s book online: http://www.trudeauformula.com

What’s the history of these Green New Deal proposals? What’s in them, anyways? And how do the policies proposed by AOC, Bernie and the NDP’s “Power to Change: A new deal for climate action and good jobs” compare?

Team Advantage takes a critical look at the history of GND proposals, comparing and contrasting their strengths and weaknesses.