SACRAMENTO — For decades, California employers have griped about state laws governing overtime pay and lunch breaks, contending that they raise costs and darken the business climate.
Now, their concerns have become a Republican bargaining chip in tough negotiations between the governor and lawmakers over how to fix a $14.8-billion hole in the state budget for the current fiscal year that threatens to shut down government by spring.
Major business groups took their concerns to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and last month he included them in his plan for addressing the budget crisis.
"Workplace reforms," Schwarzenegger said, are "needed to help keep jobs in California." Giving California employers incentives to boost payrolls and not flee to lower-cost states would generate more tax revenue and help balance the state budget, he predicted.
But Sacramento Democrats, who control both the Senate and Assembly, flatly reject the proposal, which has been pushed unsuccessfully by the GOP since the early 1990s.
"We're not interested in rolling back hard-fought gains for workers in California," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento).
At issue are two very different views about how to calculate overtime pay and how strictly to enforce rules that require workers to take unpaid lunch and rest breaks.
Consider the state rules on work breaks. They are intended to make sure that employers don't force hourly workers to work for long periods without a break. Current law requires that mandatory, unpaid, half-hour lunch breaks be given before the end of the sixth consecutive hour on the job.
Employers say they want to modify the overly rigid law to give them and employees needed flexibility to set schedules. They say they want to make it possible for staff members to eat a sandwich at their desks voluntarily or to keep waiting tables -- and earning tips -- during a busy time at a restaurant. Additionally, working through a lunch break could give employees the option of going home early, employers contend.
Indeed, complying with such work rules often is unpractical, said workers in the package delivery and restaurant industries, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak by their employers. "I could be in the middle of a building and have to stop right there," one courier said.
