Schwarzenegger to state workers: Work more for same pay
State employees would work more starting in July but their take-home pay would remain the same under a new cost-cutting policy laid out Friday in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s revised 2010-11 budget proposal.
With California facing a $19.1 billion general fund deficit, the Republican governor wants to put employees on a “personal leave” program that would subtract a day’s wages from their monthly paychecks in exchange for eight hours of floating time off.
Those reductions would come on top of others Schwarzenegger proposed in January: a 5 percent pay cut for all state workers’ pay and boosting what employees kick in to their pensions by 5 percent of their earnings.
Taken together, workers would continue to see their pay reduced by about 15 percent, but would have one day off a month instead of the three they have now.
Schwarzenegger unveiled the cost-cutting plan against a backdrop of intensifying labor contract talks with several state employee unions. Many state workers and their labor leaders had feared Schwarzenegger would extend a controversial furlough program scheduled to expire on June 30.
“Schwarzenegger’s throwing us a bone. A small one. At least he didn’t continue the furloughs,” said Chris Voight, staff director for the California Association of Professional Scientists.
Service Employees International Union Local 1000, which represents 95,000 state workers, declined to comment until it could analyze Schwarzenegger’s proposal.
Full employee compensation would cost the $83.4 billion general fund roughly $10 billion. The governor’s new leave plan would chop that by $446 million for fiscal 2010-11, according to administration estimates. Other state funds would save about $349 million.
If lawmakers agreed to Schwarzenegger’s plan –a long shot at best with Democrats controlling the Legislature – state workers’ take-home pay would stay about the same as it is now because most are furloughed three days…
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com
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