(found on latimes.com)
Gov. urges minimum wage for California state workers until budget deal is reached
The state controller says he will defy any order from Schwarzenegger to cut pay for 200,000 state employees if the new fiscal year, which starts July 1, begins without a budget accord.
By Shane Goldmacher, Los Angeles Times
June 24, 2010
Reporting from Sacramento
After enduring more than a year of unpaid monthly furlough days, state workers could see their pay cut to minimum wage until Sacramento strikes a budget accord this summer, according to a memo from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration sent Wednesday.
Schwarzenegger is pushing for the pay cut as yet another overdue state spending plan looms. But the man charged with writing workers’ paychecks, Controller John Chiang, said he would defy the order.
The new fiscal year begins July 1, but with lawmakers and Schwarzenegger all but resigned to missing that deadline, the annual wrangling has begun over which of California’s bills will be paid with no budget in place.
The memo from Department of Personnel Director Debbie Endsley to state department heads said that “absent a state budget,” the governor would seek to slash workers’ pay to minimum wage until the impasse is over.
Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said the administration is following the law. Unions representing state workers don’t see it that way.
“I think that the governor’s doing this for purely political purposes,” said Dave Low, a lobbyist for the California School Employees Assn.
Dave Low
Chiang spokesman Garin Casaleggio said Read the rest of this entry »
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