• BaldProphet@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • El Barto@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.)

          • Rashnet@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            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.

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      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.

        • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • BaldProphet@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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              1 year ago

              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.

    • WHYAREWEALLCAPS@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      California is not right to work, that means that a person can work in a union shop without being a member of the union. You are thinking of at will.