No one likes to wake up to the news that the boss may slash salaries to the minimum wage.
California's state workers on Thursday were digesting the news that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may cut their pay to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour until legislators send him a budget he can sign.
For some, that went down about as well as a meal that could be afforded on minimum wage.
"I'd probably be out on the streets . . . learning how to eat out of garbage cans," said Zola Salena-Hawkins, a legal secretary at the attorney general's office at the Ronald Reagan State Office Building in downtown Los Angeles.
Salena-Hawkins said she left the private sector nine years ago for job security and benefits, but with the way things are going, she's "thoroughly disappointed."
"I'm a Republican. Ouch!" she said. "It really hurts to see the way everything is falling apart, especially during a Republican watch."
Schwarzenegger was expected to sign the order early next week, affecting 200,000 state workers. The deadline for passing a 2008-09 budget was July 1, and without one soon, California may be unable to borrow billions of dollars needed to keep the state solvent, officials have warned.
The plan would allow the state to defer paying about $1 billion a month, administration officials said. Workers would be repaid their lost earnings once a budget was in place. But many workers questioned how they would pay their immediate costs: mortgages, food, gas, child support.
"I won't be able to survive," said Carolina Castillo, a legal secretary. "I have three kids, I'm a single mom. . . . There's just no way."
Castillo, 34, said that if her wages were cut, she might need welfare and would have no choice but to return to the private sector, which she left a year and a half ago for a steadier schedule and more time with her family.
However, some state workers with a knowledge of political history considered the prospect of Schwarzenegger's plan with a Zen calm. Many a July has come and gone without a budget in place but with dramatic predictions of layoffs and pay cuts that never came to pass, they noted.
"It's possible but improbable," said Don Williams, a staffer in the Department of Social Services who ruefully called himself "a veteran of many wars" during his state service.
Williams said he thought the governor's proposal "was strategically done to get the attention of the Legislature. It definitely got the attention of the state workers."
