Why 2023 Was Such a Busy Year for Labor in California

This year was a strong one for labor in the United States.

Public support for labor nationwide ran high, and workers in many industries — health care, hospitality, Hollywood and more — who went on strike came away with big gains.

Much of that labor activity was concentrated in California. Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations reported that 392 labor actions nationwide began in 2023, with 171 of them in the Golden State. The state’s high cost of living and broad support for organized labor made it prime ground for action.

Most of the state’s strike activity took place in the Los Angeles area, where the gap between the very poor and the very rich is especially large.

I spoke with my colleague Jill Cowan, a New York Times reporter based in Los Angeles, about the state’s “hot labor summer.”

Here’s our conversation, lightly edited.

Refresh my memory about labor actions that took place in L.A. this year.

In March, the Los Angeles Unified School District support staff held a three-day strike, which sort of felt like the beginning of a moment, at least in L.A. Our colleague Kurtis Lee and I reported on the idea that many parents, who you’d think might be frustrated or annoyed that the schools shut down, were actually really sympathetic, because they understand how hard it is to afford to live in L.A.

Then you get the Hollywood strikes. The writers’ strike, for the first time, brought together in solidarity more traditionally unionized blue-collar industries and writers, who are theoretically knowledge workers but were also feeling squeezed and worried that their jobs were not sustainable. That really kicked things into higher gear.

Why has L.A. in particular been such a hot spot for labor action?

Elsewhere in the country, labor support seems renewed because it’s set against a longer-term decline in union membership. But California and L.A., specifically, had been able to buck that larger trend, and the reasons go back to the organization of largely immigrant workforces in L.A. in the ’80s and ’90s.

That era transformed California’s politics: Almost every powerful politician in L.A. has some kind of community organizing history. Many of the most powerful leaders in L.A. are labor leaders, because they come up through those channels. So labor here is already really strong.

The other piece of it is that L.A. is just a place where inequality is really, really visible. San Francisco is also that way, but San Francisco is not as big as L.A. And there are a lot of working-class Angelenos who work in service jobs or warehouses or manufacturing. All of those people feel how hard it is to get by in L.A.

The strikes have definitely brought attention to that issue, but have they gotten workers better contracts?

I think the sense is that they are effective. Employers, companies are seeing that these labor actions go on a long time and they can really disrupt operations.

What do you think is going to happen in 2024? Are we going to have even more labor actions, even more strikes?

I think it just depends on which contracts are coming up. I think the new solidarity we’ve seen among workers across industries — like how nurses and teachers showed up to the writers’ strike picket lines — is definitely going to be a lasting thing.

Where we’re traveling

Today’s tip comes from Margret Caruso, who lives in Redwood City. She recommends a Central Coast vacation:

“A September trip to Pajaro Dunes, with its starry night sky and shorebird-filled beaches, was the perfect launchpad for magical scuba diving in Monterey Bay; a boat tour of the Elkhorn Slough, where we were astonished by the numbers of sea otters and seals, along with sea lions, cormorants and a peregrine falcon; whale watching from Moss Landing; and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. A walk along the cliffs of Wilder Ranch near Santa Cruz, where we spotted whales along with seals and sea otters, was the highlight of a day of beach bird watching along Highway 1 and tide pooling in Half Moon Bay (and a perfect birthday excursion).”

Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We’ll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.

Tell us

As 2023 comes to a close, tell us what the best part of your year was. Did you have a big birthday, start a new job or adopt a pet? Email us at CAtoday@nytimes.com. Please include your name and the city in which you live.

And before you go, some good news

After exhaustive research, New York Times Cooking and The Times’s food writers and editors have compiled their list of the year’s best cookbooks, with a sizable cohort of California chefs and recipe developers represented.

In “Love Is a Pink Cake,” Claire Ptak, a baker born in California, puts a West Coast spin on traditional British sweets with delightful results. “Rintaro,” the first cookbook from Sylvan Mishima Brackett, the chef and owner of Izakaya Rintaro in San Francisco, mines the Japanese-California fusion cuisine he has popularized at his restaurant.