California’s proposed striker bailout is a fiscal disaster

California is on track to make yet another costly and irresponsible decision with taxpayer dollars—once again with its unemployment policies.

Doomed to repeat the past, California’s legislature has proposed using already strained unemployment funds to pay Hollywood’s striking workers. Golden State taxpayers are already reeling from budget mismanagement that saw a $100 billion surplus turn to a $25 billion deficit. Now the legislature is poised to saddle the state with more debt by forcing employers and taxpayers to pick up the tab for striking workers.

Constitutionally and traditionally, striking workers do not meet the standards of true unemployment, which generally involves not having a job and actively searching for one. Whatever one’s view on the merits of the writers’ strike, it’s a private sector dispute between unionized workers and their employers. The state shouldn’t be putting its thumb on the scale let alone asking taxpayers and small businesses to pay so the writers can have a better bargaining position.

Is the state seriously suggesting that California’s farmers, factory workers and line cooks should pay screenwriters?

The California Chamber of Commerce has rightly called Senate Bill (SB) 799 a “Job Killer” and a particularly unnecessary burden for small business owners. With the state Unemployment Insurance (UI) fund still $18 billion in debt to the federal government, with hundreds of millions in interest charges on the way, passing this bill would be a dereliction of fiscal duty.

The bill’s sponsor, California State Senator Anthony Portantino, soon to run the gauntlet for a Congressional seat, has suggested, incredibly, that the crippling debt of the unemployment fund “shouldn’t be used as an excuse” to not pass his bill, which would add yet more debt to pay gainfully employed strikers. On the contrary, being $18 billion in the red is a great reason not to add more red ink.

Currently, UI in the state requires businesses to pay into a system that distributes benefits to the unemployed. The conveniently timed SB 799 being signed into law would require virtually every business in the state to financially support strikers who are in no way affiliated with those businesses. Additionally, the bill paves the way for strikers to collect checks after just two weeks, forcing legitimately unemployed Californians to compete for those scarce dollars.

While California faces myriad problems, from crime and homelessness to debt and housing shortages, the writers’ strike has gained a level of media coverage and publicity that only Hollywood could attract. Regardless of the merits of the strikers’ position, writers making between $75,000 to $260,000, according to most estimates, represent a small minority of relatively well-paid workers. Asking California’s struggling unemployed workers to compete with these strikers for a piece of the state’s fledgling safety net is simply unreasonable.

For a governor with national ambitions, California taxpayers can only hope that Gavin Newsom wouldn’t sign a bill that pours gasoline on the state’s fiscal fire. And for Sacramento’s bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, let’s hope that preventing their fellow legislators from creating new problems, and worsening existing ones, is in their remit.

Lance Christensen is the Vice President of Government Affairs at the California Policy Center (californiapolicycenter.org).