Dispatches From The Picket Lines: WGA & SAG-AFTRA Rally To Support California Granting Unemployment Benefits To Striking Workers; NYC Event Focuses On Climate Change
deadline.comThis is Day 129 of the WGA strike and Day 56 of the SAG-AFTRA strike. Striking writers and actors rallied on Thursday outside Amazon Studios in Culver City to show their support for a bill pending in the California legislature that would provide unemployment insurance to striking workers.
Strikers in New York and New Jersey are entitled to collect unemployment benefits after two weeks on the picket line, but striking workers in California aren’t eligible because they’re considered to have left their jobs “voluntarily.” Senate Bill 799 would change that if makes it through the state legislature and is signed into law by Gov.
Gavin Newsom. It passed the Assembly Insurance Committee last week and the Legislature has until September 14 to send it to the governor’s desk for signature.
A similar bill passed the Assembly in 2019 but failed in the Senate by two votes. WGA West President Meredith Stiehm, who testified last week in Sacramento in favor of the bill, said at today’s rally that “if you lose your job or get laid off, you can apply for unemployment benefits.
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