Unemployment is paid for by employers. Paying unemployment to striking workers is in effect forcing employers to keep paying their employees even though they're not working.
Keep in mind that California is an at-will employment state.
Just wanted to point out that “Right to work” is a union term.
California, like every U.S. state except Montana, employment is “at will,” meaning that they can fire you for any reason (except for illegal ones like discrimination.)
Here's the AFL-CIO's take on right to work AFL-CIO
I used to be a union member in a right to work state and we had no union contract or protections until a democrat majority was voted in to the state government and passed a law allowing public safety unions to collectively bargain a contract with our employer.
forcing employers to keep paying their employees even though they’re not working.
That’s the whole fucking point of unemployment. The insurance rates are paid by companies, but it’s not their money to direct as they please for their own benefit. They’d very much tell ex-employees to go fuck themselves if they could, but they’re forced to pay into the fund that supports them.
Regulation is coercive (and good). Businesses aren’t maintaining safety standards and supporting their out-of-work employees out of pure altruism. The real objection for businesses is not that unemployment rates might be marginally higher (people are just regular unemployed way more often than they’re striking), it’s that this increases worker power.
But when you're paying striking workers to strike, you're incentivizing them to never compromise as long as the benefits last, which would be up to 26 weeks. Besides being unable to afford it, the state would start to see longer strikes and businesses moving out. I feel dirty for saying it, but this time Newsom was right.
Unemployment isn’t endless, isn’t 100% of your pay, and doesn’t allow you to take other work. It’s still always financially better to go back to work. This is exactly the bullshit conservative argument against having unemployment at all, “it makes workers not want to work”.
And yes, more monetary support for striking workers would increase worker power, I already said that. It wouldn’t necessarily cause long strikes, but it would make employers unlikely to be able to starve out a strike. That’s a good thing. Corporate/worker power is so amazingly out-of-balance that strikers are basically always in the right. Maybe with more power they could eventually get to the point where it would be abused, but currently anything that biases things towards workers is good.
Striking workers should get unemployment checks. Striking workers are unable to work due to no fault of their own. That’s what unemployment is supposed to cover.
A strike can only legally happen if contract negotiations are not making progress. If negotiations have reached an impasse, the union can chose to strike, or management can choose to lockout the workers. As long as the union’s side of the negotiating table are bargaining in good faith, neither a strike nor a lockout is the fault of the workers. Therefore in any just world they would be eligible for unemployment.
They could choose to be scabs, so I don’t see how it’s not a choice for the workers.
I still think they should get unemployment benefits, or some other type of payment, but you don’t have to be part of a strike. You don’t even have to be part of a union to strike, as you are asserting.
Being a scab is against the rules of nearly every union. And California law requires all employees of unionized workplaces to be members of the union. Would be pretty unfair for the state to deny unemployment because you could break the bylaws of the union that the state required you to join.
Strikes are a legally recognized thing. There’s no way the state would provide unemployment to illegal strikes.
It depends on the union. Strike funds are a good idea. Many unions have them. But there are many expenses in operating any organization, and the dues cover all expenses of the union.
“he vetoed this bill because the fund the state uses to pay unemployment benefits will be nearly $20 billion in debt by the end of the year.
The fund the state uses to pay unemployment benefits is already more than $18 billion in debt. That’s because the fund ran out of money and had to borrow from the federal government during the pandemic, when Newsom ordered most businesses to close and caused a massive spike in unemployment. The fund was also beset by massive amounts of fraud that cost the state billions of dollars.”
The reasoning and background, if anyone is curious
What?! No one else gets unemployment checks while striking. Also, there is literally negative money. Unemployment isn’t for people turning down their paychecks anyway. Their union should be covering this with the dues they pay.
If only the bloods and crips were pro-worker instead of pro-wealthy class.
Newsom, a Democrat, says he supports workers and often benefits from campaign contributions from labor unions. But he said he vetoed this bill because the fund the state uses to pay unemployment benefits will be nearly $20 billion in debt by the end of the year.
Beyond the debt, the Newsom administration has said the fund is not collecting enough money to pay all of the benefits owed. The money comes from a tax businesses must pay on each worker. But that tax only applies to the first $7,000 of workers’ wages, a figure that has not changed since 1984 and is the lowest amount allowed under federal law.
That’s a really weird take for someone who looks to be trying to run in the ‘28 race. Why this stance over all the others you’ve taken? This would have been a grand slam policy along with the others he’s approved this minth
Some people seem to think that Democrats need to actually do things to keep the unions loyal, like American politics is about trading favors and negotiating alliances. In reality all the Democrats need to do is point at the Republican boogeyman and the unions fall in line.
I agree. The dems need to show more to the unions. But if they do that then they lose the donations from the bigger corporations. No matter what it’s a lose lose game for the workers
He also vetoed a few other progressive bills. He’s gone from a “politically uninspiring, but at least he’s got fight” to “no, thanks” with this active hippy punching shit. He didn’t even need to do anything, passively signing bills that were voted on by his legislature wouldn’t blow back on him at all, but he’s actively signaling hostility to progressives because he wants to curry favor with people that oppose them.
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