Your guide to California policy and politics

It’s strike season in California, again.

Today, fast food workers across the state are set to picket outside of Starbucks, Chipotle, Jack in the Box and other restaurants to protest the companies’ efforts to qualify a 2024 referendum to overturn a new state law. The first-in-the-nation law, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on Labor Day, would create a state council to regulate fast food industry working conditions and push the minimum wage to as much as $22 per hour next year.

Meanwhile, 48,000 University of California academic workers — who conduct much of the teaching, grading and research at the nation’s premier public university system — are prepared to begin their second straight day of strikes at all 10 UC campuses to demand significantly higher wages to help cover sky-high housing costs, improved child care subsidies, enhanced health coverage and other benefits.

The widespread walkout of teaching assistants, postdocs, graduate student researchers and other employees has already prompted class cancellations and forced labs to close or scale back their research — not long before the start of final exams.

The UC strikes have attracted the attention of some of the state’s most powerful leaders: 33 state lawmakers sent a letter to UC President Michael Drake urging him to “avert strikes by ceasing to commit unfair labor practices and begin bargaining in good faith” with the four United Auto Workers unions representing the...

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