California Democrats will reintroduce bill to give striking workers unemployment benefits
Striking California workers would be eligible for unemployment benefits if lawmakers approve a proposal that Democrats plan to introduce in the final stretch of the legislative year.
The last-minute effort, first reported by Politico, comes as hundreds of thousands of California laborers — including actors, writers, hotel workers and municipal employees — have walked off the job during a summer ripe with union activity.
Sen. Anthony Portantino, a Southern California Democrat who also chairs the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, confirmed to The Bee on Friday that he will carry the bill. The legislation is not yet in print, but Portantino said he hopes to change that within the next 10 days. Co-authors include Democratic Assembly members Laura Friedman and Chris Holden, Politico reported.
“Respect is hard to legislate but helping people pay their rent and feed their kids during these unprecedented times will lead to a better economic outcome for all,” Portantino said in a statement to The Sacramento Bee through spokesperson Lerna Kayserian Shirinian.
The bill is sponsored by the California Labor Federation, whose leader, former Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, previously introduced the bill in 2019. That bill failed and received intense backlash from industry groups ranging from grocers to hospitals.
“You really realize the longer the strike goes, the more leverage the employer has,” Gonzalez Fletcher told The Bee in 2019. “Workers sometimes have to agree to cuts to health care, to their retirement, just to insure they can put food on the table.”
At the time, an opposition letter from the California Chamber of Commerce said the bill would fundamentally change unemployment insurance by offering it to employees who are not actively looking for work and who have a job waiting for them once the dispute is settled.
Legislators can’t introduce new bills, but they can overhaul an existing bill that they no longer wish to pursue and repurpose it with new language — a workaround known by some as a “gut-and-amend”.
Lawmakers return from recess on Monday.
