California Labor Law: 1, Schwarzenegger: 0

Sacramento, CAIn an effort to relieve the financial pressure on state coffers, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently amended California labor law to legalize mandated furloughs (unpaid days off). However, California laborers did not take the decree well, and the state may be forced to find another way to solve the state's fiscal crisis.


Governor Schwarzenegger decreed this past summer that nearly all state workers would be required to take three unpaid days off each month. Furlough days could not be cashed out and workers were ordered to take the days prior to June 2012.

Unions were not happy. The state was challenged several times in court, most recently by correctional officers in the state penal system, who went against the state after Judge Frank Roesch of Alameda County Court ruled last week that the amendment violated state law.

"We're gratified by the affirmation of the court that the governor was violating wage and hour laws," said Lance Corcoran, a spokesman for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which filed the lawsuit, as reported on December 18 by the Los Angeles Times. "In essence, you can't expect people to work for free."

According to the Los Angeles Times, an October report from the state Senate said workers in the prison system had banked 1.5 million unused furlough hours in the first seven months of the program. Monetary value of those hours translates to $52 million at the current rate of pay for prison guards. Correctional workers had also accrued a million hours of unused vacation through August.

Judge Roesch ordered the state to pay the prison workers for the unpaid hours they have worked. A spokesperson for the governor's office said that the state would appeal the ruling.

There have been other legal setbacks for the governor when it comes to furloughs and California labor employment law. Earlier this year a San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled that workers at the State Compensation Insurance Fund should be exempt from the furlough order. Judge Charlotte Walter Woolard found that the workers were owed back pay and interest from the state.

Three other challenges to Governor Schwarzenegger's furlough decree are still pending in Alameda County Superior Court. Judge Roesch, who upheld the right for prison guards to be paid under California labor employment law, will also preside over the other three cases.