Workers Bracing for Hit in California Budget Discussions

Sacramento, CAA potential battle royal is brewing in the State of California with regard to California labor laws. On one side, formidable State Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and a ballooning state deficit: on the other, California workers who fear California State labor law will be watered down in the effort to rescue the State coffers. Labor critics fear that workers will be used as pawns, and California labor employment law will be but a shadow of its former self.

No one argues that California is bleeding, with a $14.8 billion deficit for the current fiscal year. There is talk of the State running out of money by the spring unless drastic action is taken. Governor Schwarzenegger, at least in his various former Hollywood personas, is no stranger to taking drastic action.

The fear here, is that the rescue of the State's fiscal health will be borne on the backs of workers in danger of losing ground in hard-won California labor law, and employers who have long griped of operating in a regulatory noose are using the budget crisis as leverage to get the regulations relaxed.

Employers—who so far, it is said, have the Governor's ear—feel that loosening the rules on computation of employee overtime and the observance of meal breaks will lower their costs and attract new business and commerce to the State, improving California's tax base in the process.

However, advocates for California workers fear that if rumored changes go through, workers will be unnecessarily exploited. "We're not interested in rolling back hard-fought gains for workers in California," Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), told the Los Angeles Times this week.

It should be noted that the Democrats control both the State Senate and Assembly, and have flatly rejected a proposal that Republicans have been pushing for more than a decade.

Currently State rules require that workers observe, or at the very least be allowed to observe a mandatory, unpaid half-hour lunch break prior to the conclusion of the sixth consecutive hour on the job.

Employers want to get out from under this rigidity, by allowing workers to eat a sandwich at their desks and continue working if they so choose, with the understanding that they can knock off early. However, critics say that the early dismissal in such situations rarely happens. While workers in some industries have suggested that rigid break times are not practical for their particular job, such as waiting tables in a busy restaurant or the delivery of packages for a courier, worker advocates prefer to point to examples of employers who allegedly flaunt the system as it now exists, and suggest the bedlam that would ensue if guidelines were relaxed.

You Ain't Seen Nuthin' Yet

Case in point is Wal-Mart, which was slammed with a $172 million judgment on behalf of 116,000 current and former employees who accused the retail giant of failing to pay them for missed lunch breaks. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is appealing the judgment.

Overtime is another issue up for budgetary discussion in Governor Arnold's office. With various exceptions according to sector—such as computer workers, for example—California State law holds that workers can expect to receive time-and-a-half for every hour worked by an hourly worker beyond the standard 8-hour day. Further, overtime pay accrues on a weekly basis after an employee puts in more than 40 hours in any given week.

Employers say such rigidity is tough on employees who want to knock off for an hour to go watch their kid play baseball. They can make up the lost time the next day in exchange for the hour, without triggering overtime.

But labor leaders beg to differ, suggesting that such allowances are already there. A State law passed in 1999 provides employees the right to alter their schedules as necessary to take care of personal business or needs, and the employer is exempt from paying overtime. For that matter, employees of a specific unit or office can elect, as a group, to move to a 10-hour, 4-day week if they so choose. Overtime would be exempt from that scenario.

Hence, the line in the sand is drawn. On one side, the Governor's office and fellow Republicans who feel those concessions, and a replacement of California labor laws holds the key to reigning in the budget bear in the state. On the other, State Democrats, unions and labor leaders who feel that the posturing is an attempt to undermine basic worker rights in California.

"It's about trying to help Wal-Mart and other big corporations get away from the long-established understanding that people should get a meal break at work" or be paid extra for extra hours, said Art Pulasksi, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, in comments published in the LA Times.

One business advocate points to the number of lawsuits as a sign that California Labor Law is flawed. However Nelson Lichtenstein, a historian and director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California in Santa Barbara, told the LA Times that employers are sued, and are losing lawsuits "because they broke the law." He also suggested that incentives are dangled in front of managers to pare down labor costs.

"When you eliminate a lunch break or overtime, what you are doing is chipping away in a petty fashion at the take-home pay of the workers."

Worker advocates will be watching State budget deliberations, to see where California labor laws come out in the wash. They feel that California labor employment law should not be used as a pawn to placate the state's budget woes, and feel that California State labor law must be protected.