After hot labor summer, will Gavin Newsom sign bill giving unemployment benefits to striking workers?

The weekend. The eight-hour workday. Paid family leave. Those fruits of labor victories are part of everyday life in California. Now the state’s hot labor summer may have helped inspire another precedent-setting measure, if Gov. Gavin Newsom signs a bill on his desk that would allow striking workers to receive unemployment benefits.

How many workers would get help, and can the state afford to pay each of them as much as the $450 maximum per week? The answers, researchers and advocates say, likely depend on whether California’s recent wave of labor activism continues, and what action lawmakers take to shore up the state’s debt-ridden unemployment insurance system.

Senate Bill 799 would provide unemployment benefits to workers who have been on strike for at least two weeks. Legislators passed it Sept. 14, just before Hollywood writers and studios headed back to the negotiating table four months into a strike that has paralyzed the industry, and as thousands of Los Angeles hotel workers continue their union’s rolling labor stoppages in a push for higher wages.