Furlough Friday: Signs

Well, here in California, most of us are back on furlough Fridays as of today. State workers were docked two days' pay per month starting in February (after a couple of bureaucratic hiccups), but we were allowed to either take those unpaid days off, or bank them for later. In this way, we were able to keep the offices open five days a week.

As of this month, however, Arnold has imposed three furlough days per month, plus ordered that they be taken on Fridays, to save on building maintenance costs on those days. He'd like to take away another 5%, which might result in a fourth furlough day down the road.

My husband and I are two state workers out of the many, and we can't help but read the signs that say this is not only about the money, but about political blackmail.

1) There is no safety in numbers. Over 200,000 employees can have their salary cut 14% by one former action hero, just like that.

2)  It doesn't seem to matter from which fund a salary originates. For instance, Employment Development Department state workers are actually paid from federal accounts, not from the state's General Fund. The state does not pay EDD salaries. So what's the deal with docking their pay 14%?

3) Worse for the EDD employees: so okay, the state gives EDD employees "furlough days" by docking their pay 14%, but then won't let the employees take those days off. EDD employees must work anyway, because applications for Unemployment Insurance are still going through the roof. (BB's working today, and he says the mood in the office is ugly.)

4) Arnold tries to justify deep cuts to the in-home health care program by claiming that state-paid home health care workers are responsible for defrauding the state by 25%. But he can't come up with a definitive place where such a high number comes from.

State workers completely understand that costs must be cut. But against all logic, Arnold is cutting costs with an axe instead of a scalpel. Maybe he's playing with the livelihood of public employees to try and blackmail the legislature into passing a budget he feels he can sign.

[Yo, Sacbee! You do not have my permission to reprint this blog post. Kthx.]

Comments

[Anthony]

An open letter to the people of California:

Dear Californians:
I was born in a hospital in Richmond, CA. I attended high school and undergrad school in CA until 1984, when I left for what has now become a likely permanent leave of abscence. I consider CA my home state still. So I have to ask: why, not once but TWICE did you elect a charismatic and COMPLETELY INEXPERIENCED political fraud to the governorship, who then, in both cases, proceeded to run the state into new and unchartedf levels of Hell theat even Dante Alighieri himself would blanch at??
It's not as though experienced politicos haven't done their own version of Shock and Awe on my once garden state (names available on request). But from Day One, Ah-Null and Void, like Ronnie the Killer Jellybean, seems to have aimed, with startling precision, at the worst possible choices as a leader in tought times. And, really, WHO elected this guy? And why? In the words of Sigourney Weaver in "Aliens": "did IQs drop sharply while I was away."
There's a word for what happened. It's happened three times already in this decade in this country: It's called a coup. Look it up. Once in 2000, once in 2004 (really, what happened to the 3 million missing Kerry votes?) and once in CA.
One of the nice things about Free Market economies is that everything becomes a product for sale, including, it seems, democracy itself.
When Edmund Brown stepped down in 1966, CA was equivalent to the sixth wealthiest country in the world. Not just America, the world.
And all that has been now terminated. Ha ha.
I weep for my state. And for you all.

[pam]

Hey, America accepted Sarah Palin as a VP candidate. Infatuation with star quality isn't just a California thing. I think a genuine desire to see the shape of government changed, combined with somewhat short attention span, drives us to elect populist candidates who might be said to possess more star quality than statesmanship.

And after all, statesmanship isn't always the big solution. What happened with Gray Davis?

[e]

my mother absolutely refused to believe that reagan was elected governor. refused. just couldn't go there. then she sold our house and we moved away in 1968 and within a decade none of us could afford go there. this morning i heard on npr that fresno is the most poverty-stricken area in the country, surpassing even new orleans. they grow the produce and ship it all out and when it gets shipped back in they can't afford it and so buy potato chips. ketchup?

[bb]

This is going to get worse. We are getting over 1 million calls a day at EDD.

[Lori in Houston]

Thanks for my new work computer screen saver picture!