By the time California state senators passed a bill Thursday evening to extend unemployment benefits to striking workers, unions had already won several monumental victories in the state legislature.

They made a big deal to raise fast food wages to $20 an hour. They convinced lawmakers to pass a bill requiring driverless trucks to have a human safety driver. They convinced the

Democratically led legislature

Governor Gavin Newsom has introduced a bill that would give all California workers a minimum of five paid sick days above the current requirement

three.

So when it came time to vote on allowing

ing

workers strike to receive unemployment benefits, a

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irritated Republican

stands

Senator Rose argued that businesses wouldn’t be able to stay afloat if they did

staff

could be paid while he was working

the picket line.

Honestly, colleagues, I’m going to say it. “I think a lot of people are thinking about it,” said Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield).

The fourth branch of government in this Capitol, she said, referring to the unions, has a little too much power this year.

A little later the bill

sailed through.

The union energy that fueled this summer’s strikes by actors, writers and hotel workers has clearly hit Sacramento’s power centers

this year.

Even in a Capitol where unions have long had influence, the streak is winning

F

or organized labor was notable.

Whether Newsom will translate Labor’s victories into law remains to be seen until October. This year, 14 bills passed to sign or veto.

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ut b

The unions have the time set for the year by the legislature late Thursday evening

So

had convinced the Legislature to pass one bill that would gradually raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour for people who work in health care, including janitors, security guards, money launderers and hospital gift shop workers, and another bill to make California the first in the country to include housekeepers, nannies and other domestic workers in laws requiring health and safety protections.

They also won passage of a bill that would allow staffers who work for the Legislature to organize unions, a proposal that had failed several times in the past.

And even if it won’t get votes in the Legislature until next year, a new bill introduced in the final days of the session shows the legislature’s willingness to take the fight to striking entertainment industry workers. The legislation would give actors and artists a way to nullify assignments in vague contracts, allowing studios and other companies to use artificial intelligence to digitally clone their voices, faces and bodies.

The tug of war between labor and business is a constant in the California Capitol. But this year brought some new elements that worked to the benefit of the working class: several new lawmakers with a progressive bent, a new Assembly Speaker, Robert Rivas (D-Hollister), who championed some of the priorities of the labor movement, and ongoing strikes in the House of Representatives. Southern California has prompted many politicians to publicly side with workers.

The strikes helped people see the humanity involved, said Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, who heads the California Labor Federation, the state chapter of the AFL-CIO.

Gonzalez Fletcher himself was a state lawmaker until two years ago and introduced legislation in 2019 to provide unemployment benefits to striking workers, but it did not make much progress.

When I brought up striking workers last time, most of my fellow lawmakers probably hadn’t seen a picket line or spoken to someone who was on strike. It had been years since we had a major strike, she said.

Now many Los Angeles lawmakers have constituents on strike. They hear from them. They show up on the picket lines. They get more firsthand stories and it becomes much more real, Gonzalez Fletcher said.

Lawmakers are representatives of their communities. And what we know is that in every community in California, more and more people are looking to unions and organized labor as a way to right-size this economy, as a way to provide balance against billionaires and against corporations.

A recent Gallup poll shows that unions across the country are enjoying this

robust

public support, with two-thirds of Americans saying they support unions. The survey also asked people about which side they favor with unions or companies in three major labor disputes involving actors, writers and auto workers. In all three cases, an overwhelming majority sided with the unions.

The California Chamber of Commerce, the main opponent of unions in the Capitol, has pushed back on the idea of ​​unions

were big winners

in the legislature.

The reality is that no one won. Workers, taxpayers and California’s competitiveness will be the losers if some of the burdensome policies passed by the Legislature are ultimately signed into law, Jennifer Barrera, president and CEO of the California Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement.

As California employers face higher costs, more lawsuits and added bureaucracy, there are fewer resources left to invest in things like clean energy, employee wages, benefits and innovation. These policies will stifle job growth and ultimately lead to less tax revenue to support education, healthcare, housing and infrastructure.

Rivas, the new speaker of parliament, has committed to supporting a $25 minimum wage for health workers, just days after taking on the powerful leadership position earlier this summer. He then quickly got to work negotiating with unions, hospitals and health clinics to reach an agreement to change the law to slow the pace of wage increases and stagger wage increases depending on where workers work. He also put his name on two of them

laboratory-controlled measures

that emerged late in the session and will ask voters to do so

change the threshold

for approving taxes and bonds on the ballot. One of them is a

direct attack on a business-backed ballot measure

who wants to make it harder for voters to approve taxes. After the session ended late Thursday night, reporters asked Rivas about the Capitol workforce this year. “I think this is the time we live in,” Rivas said. “We have an affordability crisis. Middle [and] Low-income residents of our state are struggling.”

The ball now moves to Newsom’s court. He has until Oct. 14 to decide which of the hundreds of bills the Legislature sent him in its final weeks

the

session becomes law.

Herrera, Barrera,?

González

Fletcher?

and the interests they represent will spend much of the next month lobbying him for a signature or a veto.

The Teamsters get to work

on

Thursday González

Fletcher?

said, when they plan to ride their big one

–

heads to the Capitol to pressure Newsom to sign the bill requiring human drivers in autonomous trucks. It’s an example of how unions are trying to protect workers as technology evolves, both on the highways and in Hollywood studios.

We continue to look at different places where advanced technology is creeping into the workplace, says Gonzalez Fletcher.

So far, Newsom’s administration has argued that requiring human drivers in robot trucks would hinder innovation and competitiveness. And he has been careful about taking sides in the Hollywood strikes. Newsom has repeatedly warned that he will not sign bills that impose costs on the state that are not included in the budget, and he said this week that he is concerned about unemployment insurance fund debt.

Ultimately, the governor has the final say unless Democrats choose the extremely rare, near-nuclear option and override his veto, something that hasn’t happened in Sacramento since 1980.