sacbee.com: Schwarzenegger orders minimum wage for state workers

The back pay would be paid once a budget is enacted.

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/01/2864148/schwarzenegger-orders-minimum.html

Schwarzenegger orders minimum wage for state workers

By Jon Ortiz

The Schwarzenegger administration today orderedState Controller John Chiang to reduce state worker pay for July to the federal minimum allowed by law -- $7.25 an hour for most state workers.

The instructions from the Department of Personnel Administration exclude roughly 37,000 state workers in six bargaining units that recently came to tentative labor agreements with Gov.

Some employees, such as doctors and lawyers, would get no pay because federal exempts them from any minimum wage requirement. Managers, supervisors and others who don't get paid for working more than 40 hours per week would receive $455 per week until a budget deal got done.

Schwarzenegger has invoked a 2003 state Supreme Court decision as grounds for the move. That ruling, White v. Davis, held that without a budget that appropriates money for state payroll, employee wages can be withheld to the federal minimum. That condition exists today, which is the start of the 2010-11 fiscal year and the state is without a budget. The back pay would be paid once a budget is enacted.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/01/2864148/schwarzenegger-orders-minimum.html#ixzz0sWQ4BynB

Though i bet there are more than a few people on the edge of disaster looking for a payday advance at 30% right now.

So they risk losing doctors and lawyers ? Or am I reading it wrong ? Potentially a typo ?

Is it Groundhog Day again?

I have a good friend caught up in that mess.

This is why California needs to get rid of the 2/3 requirement for passage of the state budget and new taxes.

It's the only state that has that requirement for both. And it causes the budget to be help up almost every year.

As for the minimum state wage...the ridiculousness of the whole thing is that Arnie has said all along that all state workers should feel the same pain - thus an across the board 15% cut in pay via furloughs (that really wasn't across the board - but that is another issue).

The net result, a loss of 47 paid days (or two month's salary) for state workers over 20 months. Now, with this threat, the only ones who are being threatened are the one's who labor union's haven't bent over and taken it with new lesser contracts.

I am aware of the slant of the producer of the article.

edited to remove any claim of it being factual. Although I have seen the claim of the pay of state workers being paid less than the private sector for comparable work in other articles.

http://www.thenation.com/article/war-public-workers

War on Public Workers

Amy Traub

Conservatives have declared a new class war, but it's not on bankers earning seven-figure bonuses. Instead, as Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels told Politico recently, the "new privileged class in America" is government employees, who "are better paid than the people who pay their salaries." We have to escape "public sector unions' stranglehold on state and local governments," agreed Mort Zuckerman, billionaire editor of U.S. News & World Report, "or it will crush us." Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot ominously predicts "a showdown looming across the country between taxpayers and public employee unions over pay and pensions," while the Heritage Foundation warns that "the more the government taxes, the more it can pay its unionized workers."

This decades-old assault on government employees has acquired new potency at a time of widespread economic suffering and populist rage. But the attacks have little basis in reality. A recent study by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence and the National Institute on Retirement Security finds that when such factors as education and work experience are accounted for, state and local employees earn 11 to 12 percent less than comparable private sector workers. Even when public employees' relatively decent pensions and health coverage are included, their total compensation still lags behind workers in private industry. A separate analysis by the Center for Housing Policy finds that despite recent declines in home prices, police officers and elementary school teachers still don't earn enough to buy a typical house in two out of five metro areas. Firefighters and librarians are unable to afford the median home in the New York, Los Angeles and Chicago metro areas. Nationwide, a school bus driver's wage isn't enough to pay rent on a standard two-bedroom apartment.

Despite American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funding, which preserved jobs and public services, city and state workers have been affected by the recession. The Economic Policy Institute reports that 180,000 local government employees have been laid off since August 2008, while furloughs have become a fact of life for public workers across the country. Much bigger cuts lie ahead: Education Secretary Arne Duncan warns that as stimulus funding dries up, as many as 300,000 teachers and other school personnel could lose their jobs this year to budget cuts.

The lavish lifestyle of public workers is a myth, but the right-wing mythmakers know it's a powerful talking point. By attacking public workers, they can demonize "big labor" and "big government" at the same time, while deflecting attention from the more logical target of Middle America's rage: the irresponsible Wall Street traders, whose risky, high-profit business practices brought down the economy, and the lax regulators who let them get away with it.

At its heart, the scapegoating of public employees is an insidious way to divide public and private sector workers who share many of the same interests. The Manhattan Institute's Nicole Gelinas, for example, cynically argues that cutting pensions for transit employees is an act of "pure social justice" because it might spare minimum-wage workers higher subway fares. Absent is any disussion of raising the minimum wage or of more progressive means of funding the transit system. Low-wage workers aren't Gelinas's real concern; they're just a rhetorical device in her assault on public employees.

MORE AFTER LINK

Are you claiming Arnold is a conservative now that funny.

(side note: If Arnold did this in 2008, wasn't that before picking on public workers was cool)?

Though i would agree with the Controller... trying to change all those payrolls and then get them back to normal with backpay upon completion will be a daunting task.

Are you claiming Arnold is a conservative now that funny.

(side note: If Arnold did this in 2008, wasn't that before picking on public workers was cool)?

Though i would agree with the Controller... trying to change all those payrolls and then get them back to normal with backpay upon completion will be a daunting task.

"Conservatives" have been anti-union as far back as I remember - Reagan laying off all the air traffic controllers being a good example. And yes, fiscally, Arnie is a conservative. Moreso, he fits the very notion of the GOP these days - don't raise taxes (cut them really) but keep spending. Remind me again why Grey Davis was recalled? ****ing Enron dicks. :mad:

The state payroll system is antique. 30+ years old antique. I don't anything coming out of this move other than lawsuits, more renogotiated labor contracts, and lawsuits again.

Evil Genius,

No, no, no, no, no!

They all know the 2/3rds requirement and should make the budget a priority.

How can the legislature complain when they fail to take care of their constitutional duty?

How can the legislature complain when they fail to take care of their constitutional duty?

When 64% of the legislature agrees on a budget.

It's party line voting from the GOP that keeps balanced budgets from being passed on time, every year, in California.

TEG, that article reads like an AFL-CIO talking points email. I'm not dismissing it as incorrect - I'd have to know more about their statistical method vs. the methods used by those claiming that the public sector is out of control - but you have to understand that when you read a paragraph like this...

The lavish lifestyle of public workers is a myth, but the right-wing mythmakers know it's a powerful talking point. By attacking public workers, they can demonize "big labor" and "big government" at the same time, while deflecting attention from the more logical target of Middle America's rage: the irresponsible Wall Street traders, whose risky, high-profit business practices brought down the economy, and the lax regulators who let them get away with it.

...it comes off as no less disingenuous than an article that claims, "Honest, hard-working bankers are the victims of easy populist propaganda, while the real anger should be focused on unions, whose socialist agendas are grinding the American economy to a halt."

To accept the underlying premise of that article as "fact" while simultaneously dismissing the underlying premise of the counter-argument as something less than "fact" seems to be quite the redefinition of what a "fact" actually is.

Hubbs - I can agree with that analysis. I did, however, acknowledge the source wasn't the greatest.

When 64% of the legislature agrees on a budget.

It's party line voting from the GOP that keeps balanced budgets from being passed on time, every year, in California.

Hubbs - I can agree with that analysis. I did, however, acknowledge the source wasn't the greatest.

Oh, I know. But if NavyDave said, "I know this article by Glenn Beck might seem a little biased, but it's full of pure facts," I have the sneaking suspicion that you'd be skeptical.

Oh, I know. But if NavyDave said, "I know this article by Glenn Beck might seem a little biased, but it's full of pure facts," I have the sneaking suspicion that you'd be skeptical.

If?

I should edit it...(I will edit it).

Funny, when the economy is booming, public sector workers are viewed as schmos settling for middling pay in exhange for job security, while their private sector counterparts make the big money. Then, when the economy tanks, those schmos who settled for job security are all of a sudden "the new privileged class in America."

California chooses to give the minority more than just "minority" power when it comes to the budget. So what? That means it's crucial for both parties to negotiate a bi-partisan budget that will get passed on time, even if the majority party doesn't like it. Do you agree?

Which is why I said that California should be like the other 49 (or 56) states that don't require a 2/3 vote to pass state budgets.

It has created this monster and the monster is eating us.

Funny, when the economy is booming, public sector workers are viewed as schmos settling for middling pay in exhange for job security, while their private sector counterparts make the big money. Then, when the economy tanks, those schmos who settled for job security are all of a sudden "the new privileged class in America."

Ironic huh?

Has any CEO of any large business ever treated his employees with so much contempt?

If?

I should edit it...(I will edit it).

No, no, you're supposed to call me some sort of label, insist I'm nothing more than a brainwashed follower of [insert pundit here], then sarcastically ask me how much I'm being paid by whichever quasi-related interest group is particularly unpopular this week. Don't you know how these things work?

Don't you know how these things work?

Unfortunately, that's what she said.

Back on topic though - I find it troubling that within California state departments, you will have workers being paid minimum wage, full salary, or nothing - depending on what union represents them.

I'm so glad I got the hell out of California. What a cluster**** that state is.

Governor Ah-nold was quoted as saying

"Accept the pay cut to minimum wage, or your position will be TERMINATED"

Unfortunately, that's what she said.

Damnit, I walked into that.

Back on topic though - I find it troubling that within California state departments, you will have workers being paid minimum wage, full salary, or nothing - depending on what union represents them.

Yeah, that's definitely not good.

Governor Ah-nold was quoted as saying

"Accept the pay cut to minimum wage, or your position will be TERMINATED"

Arnold will also be taking over all state medical duties.

"IT'S NOT A TUM-AH!"

Welp. We've seen this played out for several years in a row now. Looks like I won't be getting paid at all, not until the California GOP finally allows a budget to be passed in September or so.

I'm sure they have my best interests at heart.

Welp. We've seen this played out for several years in a row now. Looks like I won't be getting paid at all, not until the California GOP finally allows a budget to be passed in September or so.

I'm sure they have my best interests at heart.

Strange that it keeps occurring

Interesting strategy by your elected representatives and who you blame for it.