Furloughs end, but layoffs remain a possibility

SacBee: State Worker ^ | 8/25/11 | Jon Ortiz

[SmithL]

First, the good news for state workers: Next month about 25,000 of you return to steady full hours and full pay for the first time in 31 months.

Now the bad: Layoffs are coming – the real kind, where real people go to the unemployment line.

Roughly 200,000 state workers have been without full wages and work since former GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature started twice-monthly furloughs in February 2009. Then they added a third day a few months later. One unpaid day equals about a 5 percent pay cut.

Last summer four unions representing those 25,000 operating engineers, doctors, psychiatric technicians, social service workers and a few other job classes bargained to trade furloughs for a "personal leave program," or PLP, of 12 unpaid days off over 12 months.

The contracts also guaranteed that the state wouldn't impose furloughs during the personal leave months.

In September, the program ends for those employees, but the guaranteed furlough protection does, too. (Unions representing 175,000 employees agreed to similar deals later, so their personal leave program ends later on.)

Meanwhile, the state's finances are in the dumper. . . .

[Wombat Ark]

One day off equals about a 5% cut in pay?! Either these folks only work 20 days a year, or the arithmetic is off by an order of magnitude. Based on 2000 hours a year and 8-hour workdays, a day off will cost the employee only 0.4% of pay.