SACRAMENTO, California — Fallout over the war in Gaza derailed a top priority for an influential California labor group Wednesday when a measure to provide unemployment insurance benefits to striking workers stalled over legislators’ objections to pro-Palestinian campus strikes.
The bill died after an emotionally-charged hearing in the Assembly Insurance Committee. During the hearing several members decried the California Labor Federation’s support for academic workers across the University of California system who recently walked out to protest the arrests of pro-Palestinian demonstrators on campuses.
The strikes roiled campuses from Santa Cruz to Davis, and lawmakers on Wednesday raised concerns about reports of antisemitism at the protests while questioning the legitimacy of the work stoppage.
“I no longer understand if we have a shared understanding of what a strike is,” Orinda Democrat Rebecca Bauer-Kahan said, tearing up as she recounted her grandparents’ experience in the Holocaust. “They’re marching across our beautiful UC campuses, yelling ‘Kill one more’ in reference to the Jews.”
Labor law limits strikes to issues including wages, working conditions and employers’ “unfair labor practices.” The workers argued the UC’s handling of student protests, including arrests and suspensions of demonstrators, amounted to several unfair labor practices that justified a walkout.
The conflict over the bill marks the latest example of how the war has fractured the base of the Democratic party — this time, it’s typically pro-labor Democrats expressing profound alienation over union actions.
A similar version of the bill, authored by state Sen. Anthony Portantino, easily passed the Legislature last year, buoyed by the momentum of the “Hot Labor Summer” of large-scale, union actions. It was then vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom .
“The strike has nothing to do with working conditions, but it was sanctioned by the Labor Fed,” said Marc Berman, a Democrat from Menlo Park. “That is what gives me and my colleagues, who voted for this bill last year, an immense amount of heartburn and heartache.”
The 48,000-member United Auto Workers Local 4811, which includes classroom employees and researchers, has argued the arrests and UC’s delayed response to a violent counter-protest on the Los Angeles campus constituted an unfair labor practice.
The university, meanwhile, argued the work stoppages were a political protest of the war in Gaza, and that they breached no-strike clauses in the union’s contracts. Employees returned to work earlier this month after a state court blocked the strikes at the urging of the UC.
Labor Federation head Lorena Gonzalez said the bill’s failure “only punishes grocery workers, janitors, hotel housekeepers, and other workers on strike demanding a better life for themselves or their families.”
As for the controversial strikes by the UC student workers’ union, UAW Local 4811, Gonzalez said the Labor Fed has “a responsibility to support union members” and her group authorized the walkout unanimously. She noted that UAW condemned antisemitism and it was not their members that made the hateful comments.
Lawmakers in the Legislature’s Jewish Caucus have grown increasingly concerned in recent weeks about what they argue is an effort in the labor movement to advance an extreme anti-Israel agenda.
“It turns out that marching through UC Davis calling for the death of Jews and calling to kill another 100 Jews is not a good way to win votes in the Jewish Caucus,” said one member, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations.
Jewish Caucus co-chair, Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, told reporters the group has not taken a position on the legislation. He said he respected individual members’ votes in the Insurance Committee, but pointed out that he voted for the bill in his chamber.
The bill failed to pass the committee with two Republicans voting no and five Democrats not voting.
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