Unions: Schwarzenegger plans unpaid furloughs for state workers
Leaders question the legality of ordering public employees to stay home two days a month.
Reporting from Sacramento — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration has informed the state's public employee unions that it will be ordering unpaid furloughs of two days a month to save money as the state's cash crunch tightens, union leaders said this morning.
Bruce Blanning, executive director of Professional Engineers in California Government, said Schwarzenegger's personnel office informed him that the governor also plans to issue an executive order eliminating 10% of state jobs. That could lead to thousands of layoffs.
Blanning said the furloughs amounted to a 10% pay cut and said the governor may not have the legal authority to impose it because of labor contract provisions. He also said it would hurt Schwarzenegger's goal of speeding up public works projects.
"The idea of telling people who work on those projects to say home seems counterproductive," he said.
The governor's office did not immediately confirm or deny its plans.
Jim Zamora of the Service Employees International Union, Local 1000, said his office is preparing to go to court.
"We are against it and we will plan a legal challenge," Zamora said.
Schwarzenegger said Thursday that he would veto the $18 billion budget plan Democratic legislators passed to shrink a budget gap expected to reach $42 billion by mid-2010.
The state is expected to run out of cash by February, but the governor objected to the Democrats' plan because it did not include provisions to allow more state construction to be done by private contractors with fewer environmental reviews.
Those projects are expected to halt anyway; California's top three financial officials this week cut off financing to conserve cash for the state's critical daily operations.
jordan.rau@latimes.com
