The flip in this map over the last week is fascinating. Suburbs seem to be the place where SKP voters are abandoning the government. 338canada.com/saskatchewan/m… Clearly the polarizing rhetoric from the SKP has backfired. And the SKNDP's safe campaign is either really working or just looks non-offensive by comparison.

Day three of the Sask election campaign and the promises are flowing. The NDP has been out of power for 17 years and for the first time since 2007, the party seems competitive to form gov. Let's look at the party, what it is saying (so far), and what is a narrow path to gov. The party has been humbled since the says of Blakeney, Romanow and Calvert in as much as the party machine and the party's competitiveness have drifted away.

Well, the Saskatchewan election is off and running (oh, bad pun). There are a lot of good takes out there, but it is worth breaking down what are some of the more salient issues as the campaign starts. The Sask Party (SKP) has been in power for 17 yrs and remains a popular choice among small-c Conservatives and those on the further right. The premier is controversial in as much as he's flirted with the far right and tolerated some bad behaviour from his toxic caucus members.

A while back I did a thread on binding arbitration, how it works, and what it means for the parties. One of the things I'm learning as I read and study about teacher bargaining is how the so-called 'usual' process is different in the SK education sector. Reading through the Education Act, you start with s. 244 regarding arbitration. Notice that under s. 246 arbitration is conducted by a board and under s. 247 the Act outlines the terms of reference of the Board publications.saskatchewan.ca/#/products/487

1. Binding arbitration (BA) allows the parties to a bargaining dispute to bring in a third party to impose a collective agreement on the parties. 2. If both parties agree to BA, they then must agree on an arbitrator. That person is usually a lawyer (but not in every case) who has a long history of arbitration. The arbitrator's costs (which can be significant) is then split by both parties.

I'm (slowly) working on a book examining the SK Party's time in government (2007-present) with @simon_enoch. The writing has revolved around the various govs and we are looking a multiple policy areas. But a few things stand out that help us explain the current moment. A 🧵 The SKP was elected at a transitional moment both within the broad conservative movement and in the history of the province.

Listening to the STF presser this morning I have a few thoughts about where the situation is at and how we got here. First, I have to say that the STF president is an excellent leader. She has a clear grasp of the issues and understands her membership and where they are at. I suspect she has not taken this step without a thorough understanding of the demands of her members.

I was thinking a great deal about this story today. It is hard to take the government's position seriously given its recent history of teacher bargaining. Let's quickly break it down.

Moe, Cockrill accuse STF of targeting Hoopla for job action sasktoday.ca/highlights/moe… For anyone who has been following education policy in Saskatchewan, you'll know that teachers have been waving a red flag about class size and class composition for over a decade.

As a political scientist, it is fascinating to watch the politics surrounding this announcement. And as a scholar of labour, it is even more interesting. A few thoughts on this pre-pre-budget announcement. Let's break it down.

https://twitter.com/PremierScottMoe/status/1765516672130310538

It is odd to come out so far out from budget day with a targeted, very detailed policy announcement like this. It isn't unheard of for government's to leak budget info, but this is quite detailed and clearly more political. The gov is trying to apply pressure to the teachers.

There has been a lot of discussion about the role of binding arbitration to settle the teachers strike in Saskatchewan. This is certainly possible, but not likely at the moment. There are risks, pitfalls, and possible opportunities for both sides here. Let's examine them. Binding arbitration is tool that both parties have in a labour dispute to bring in a third party (an arbitrator) to try and work through the positions of both sides and to then impose a binding contract on the employer and union. But first, both sides must agree to this process!

The discussion of the 4-day work-week on @TheCurrentCBC today really needed a historical--and more particularly a labour history perspective. The work week is not naturally 5 day/40hrs (or more). It was won through struggle--labour struggle. And the question of shorter work weeks should not begin with the question of business competitiveness or profitability. It should begin with the worker. Workers struggle for shorter days because the market historically squeezed labour from every second of the day it could.

Where we once again learn that collective bargaining in the public sector in Canada is a fallacy. Governments of all stripes continue to eliminate public workers' ability to strike.

theglobeandmail.com/canada/article… On one level, this is entirely predictable. The federal Liberals did it on the docks and to the postal workers. The federal Tories did it to rail workers and airline workers. The Ontario Libs did it to education workers. The list goes on.

I get asked a lot by people in Canada (and even abroad-mostly from the US) "what has happened to Saskatchewan?" But this, they mean, how did it go from being a bastion of CCF/NDP (Social Democratic-Progressive Liberalism) to Right-wing populism? There are dozens of reasons, but one thing stands out, and here its proximity to Alberta is important. Alberta and Saskatchewan have a lot in common, the most important is two commodities that dominate their provincial economies: Agriculture and Oil

One of the things that the pandemic showed was the vulnerability and weaknesses of #cdnpoli's democratic institutions. I think a serious gov would seriously think about ways to strengthen our democratic institutions. What would this look like? 1. Obviously voting reform is necessary, as the FPTP has long out-lived its usefulness. But voting reform isn't a silver bullet. We need to foster and sustain a democratic culture that has weakened in the past decades.

One of the foundations of a democracy is trust in gov. It doesn’t mean we support the gov or don’t criticize the gov. It doesn’t even mean you have to ever support them. But the state has to have legitimacy for state policy to be trusted by the public #skpoli #cdnpoli Democracy requires consent. But if the public thinks that governing is not about doing what is best in terms of making policy that has some basis in evidence, trust erodes. And if trust erodes too much, you have a crisis.

As I've started working on a book on #skpoli politics over the past two decades, it has me thinking a lot about how #leadership shapes political success. I've become particularly interested in what leadership looks like in times of crisis, for obvious reasons. I'm still thinking this through, but 1) let me say that sometimes I think we put way to much emphasis on leadership, thinking it alone solves political problems. I think we do a disservice when seeing leadership this way. But, having said that /2

This is where the #skpoli Premier loses me. He is leading the prov with the largest #Covid19 infection rate, the ICUs are full, community spread is high and doctors across the prov are begging for help and he does virtually nothing. Then he takes pol shots at the feds. What? I mean why the political shots when you declared the pandemic over, went on vacation for two months and #Covid19 spread like wildfire? How about some humble self-reflection? My gosh, this is so unhelpful. #skpoli

Imagine if govs spent the past year with massive economic stimulation packages to purify school air, to expand classroom size, recreation facilities, and playgrounds in schools around the province. Imagine the economic boom, the community benefit, and the improvements to safety. Then imagine that #Covid19 wasn't a major problem in schools--and what would you have? You'd still have state-of-the-art schools. So even in the worst-case scenario, you have great improvements to local schools. In the worst case, you've got great schools and safe kids and staff.

One of the things that the #Covid19 pandemic has highlighted for me is the role that class and class inequality plays in maintaining liberal capitalist societies like #cdnpoli. Workers are asked to sacrifice, workers are asked to do everything necessary to keep working. And when they raise questions about work conditions, when they ask for sick benefits, when they question why they have to go to work and face the danger of the pandemic, they're told they're being selfish or threatening the economy. #canlab

Let's examine the absurdity of this action by the Liberals in more detail. #canlab #cdnpoli

Ottawa tables legislation to send striking Port of Montreal workers back on the job | CBC News cbc.ca/news/canada/mo… The Liberals have now shown us enough of who they are to know that they are, at their core, fundamentally anti-union. Any pretext to the Labour Minister saying she would rather not do this, or that they respect collective bargaining is a straight-up fiction.

On the #skpoli election, I have been doing a lot of reading, thinking, and reflecting today trying to decipher what happened and why the SK electorate once again went overwhelmingly to the conservative Sask Party. No easy answers here but a few thoughts: #SKVotes2020 1. The economy: there is a consistent trend in this province that economic stability and moderate growth is an economic success story.