Southern California unions and the working people they represent have become the vanguard of the American labor movement. About half of the big strikes in the U.S. this year have taken place in California, with the most consequential centered in Los Angeles — now including the actors’ strike announced by SAG-AFTRA on Thursday.
The members of SAG-AFTRA join tens of thousands of hotel workers and screenwriters on strike, following big work stoppages just months ago by workers in L.A.’s public schools and at University of California campuses. Labor’s bargaining ambitions are backstopped by a sense of militancy and solidarity not seen in decades.
How did we get here, when for most of the last century Los Angeles was a union backwater embedded in a region synonymous with a sun-drenched suburbia and a conservative, hegemonic business leadership? It was the “open shop capital of America.”
