As a long time member of the NDP I watch the current leadership race with interest. There is an interesting and challenging group of candidates to choose from. To date, I have been favouring MP Heather McPherson, partly because she is the only candidate who has proven she can get elected federally. And she has proven to be an active and effective representative. Also, there’s my bias for a fellow Albertan—she represents Edmonton Strathcona.

Recently candidate Rob Ashton made a promise that shifts me a tad in his direction, specifically his Good Jobs Promise, which he describes as “a national commitment that everyone who wants to work can count on a good job with fair wages, safe conditions, dignity on the job, and a union to back them up.” A long-time dockworker and union man (he is currently president of the International Longshore Workers Union Canada), one can appreciate his commitment to the working class.

Such a promise may seem pie in the sky, yet not that long ago it was essentially a reality. After the Second World War, blue collar workers could rely on a well-paid union job with good benefits and security for life. Then came globalization and automation, and more recently AI, and much of that security has turned into precarity. Surveys show that far more people see AI as a threat to employment than a promise.

This transition has resulted in many people distrusting the system. What good is the system if it can’t provide a person with a decent living? In our neighbour to the south. the transition has led to whole sections of the country suffering economic and social decline. Midwestern states that were once the heartland of American manufacturing are now known as the Rust Belt.

Millions have become alienated from politics, convinced that neither party is concerned about the working class. In desperation and anger, they flock to a demagogue. Tragically this is a common pattern for a disillusioned populace—the embrace of a strongman who provides scapegoats and salvation through return to a mythical past.

We have better protected our people from the vicissitudes of overwhelming change with a superior welfare system, and have had the great good luck recently of the right leader arriving at just the right time. But we are not immune and change shows no indications of slowing down.

Indeed, perhaps we have entered a period that will lead to the end of work, or at least work as we have known it. Perhaps the market economy will reach a point where it can no longer provide paid employment for a growing number of people. The result could be increasing social inequalities, greater polarization, greater fear and desperation, greater threats to social order and to democracy itself.

Enter Ashton’s promise. To avoid that sort of dystopian future we need to maintain Canadians’ confidence in the system, confidence that the system cares for all of us, that it will ensure everyone can maintain a decent income regardless of change.

And that I believe is what he was talking about when he refers to “everyone who wants to work can count on a good job.” And I assume that as machines replace human workers his promise would extend if necessary to a guaranteed income. Only a system that can provide such support will prevent the same spiral into authoritarian rule that the U.S. is on.

I’m still leaning toward Heather for leader of the party, but I’m wavering. We have a professional politician and a civil servant/capitalist leading parties in the House, perhaps they should be complemented with a true leader of the working class.