Wage Reductions

More than 2,000 UCLA employees, including researchers, custodians, nurses and secretaries, gathered at Pauley Pavilion on Wednesday to protest plans for pay cuts and furloughs proposed by the University of California. Because of the state budget crisis, UC leaders are considering three proposals to reduce payroll spending by about $195 million in the next school year.

The parent company of the Daily Grill chain of restaurants announced Wednesday that a dozen top executives would take a 10% pay cut to help offset the effects of the ailing economy. The pay cut, effective immediately, will affect executives whose annual salaries range from $100,000 to $350,000, said Philip Gay, president and chief executive of Grill Concepts Inc., based in Woodland Hills. Four of the executives are members of the company's board of directors.

Officials in cash-strapped Orange County have ordered the deepest cuts in staffing in years, saying they'll lay off 210 social services workers and force 4,000 other employees to take two weeks off without pay. Not since the county's 1994 bankruptcy, when nearly 2,000 workers lost their jobs, has Orange County been in such financial straits, a result of shrinking sales tax revenue, falling property values and reduced state funding.

The U.S. Department of Labor is investigating whether the company that employs workers who process immigration and citizenship applications in Orange County violated federal regulations by cutting their pay under a new contract that begins next week.

Pilots reached a tentative pay-cut deal with Northwest Airlines Corp. on Friday, a major step toward ending a showdown that had put the airline's future in doubt. The Northwest branch of the Air Line Pilots Assn. announced the agreement but didn't release details. The nation's fourth-largest airline, which filed for bankruptcy protection in September, said it got the $358 million in savings it sought. The deal would still have to be approved by the union's leadership and members.

Delphi Corp., the ailing auto parts supplier, has offered United Auto Workers union members $50,000 each in exchange for a 35% pay cut. The offer is contingent on General Motors Corp., Delphi's former parent, helping pay the wages of Delphi workers, according to a March 24 contract proposal obtained by Bloomberg News. Hourly pay for Delphi workers would drop initially to $22 and then $16.50 on Sept. 3, 2007.

Wedding photographer Pogos Kuregyan has lowered his prices. FedEx aircraft inspector Dan Wallace is dealing with a salary cut and a retirement fund that's lost half its value. Though prices are down for food, housing, energy and clothing, they can't buy much, because they're living on less. After years of worrying about inflation, some economists fear the opposite could soon happen: deflation, an extended period of falling prices that indicates the economy is in a backward spiral.

As California and the rest of the nation stagger from massive layoffs and soaring unemployment, companies in Taiwan have largely opted to cut pay and work hours to deal with the economic crisis. Here in Hsinchu Science Park, modeled after California's Silicon Valley, about 100,000 of its 130,000 workers are taking up to 10 days of unpaid leave a month. Part of the reason is pressure from Taiwan's government, they say.

The Obama administration said Monday that it has made no decision about whether to rescind $6.8 billion in stimulus money allotted to California in a dispute over the legality of a wage cut for home healthcare workers who belong to a politically powerful union. The announcement is at odds with what state officials said they had explicitly been told. Gov.

Key Orange County executives and elected officials will be asked to take a 5% pay cut as part of the ongoing effort to slash more than $1 billion from the county's budget, supervisors decided Wednesday. "We're trying to lead by example," said Supervisor Chris Norby. "The seriousness of the economic downturn has affected our budget. It is serious. People are hurting out there."