SEIU rallies against pay cut proposal

July 24, 2008

SACRAMENTO -- The Service Employees International Union rallied on the Capitol steps Thursday afternoon with a straightforward message to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: Cut our pay at your peril.

A few hundred purple-clad union members and state employees loudly proclaimed their opposition to a gubernatorial executive order next week that would cut 200,000 state workers' pay to federal minimum wage until a new budget is approved.

"We can't survive on six-fifty-five!" members chanted, referring to the hourly wage they'd receive, lower than the state's minimum wage of $8 an hour.

State Assemblyman Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) spoke to rally members and told them more pressure needed to be applied to state legislative Republicans to pass a budget.

"It's simply unfair that state workers be held hostage because the Republicans won't vote for a budget that balance our state and gets us out of fiscal crisis," Jones told cheering union members. "We don't need to balance this on the backs of state workers. We don't need to balance this on the backs of the poor."

A $15 billion-plus deficit is the principal barrier to a state budget for 2008-09, with Democrats proposing tax increases to close the breach and Republicans saying more cuts in state spending are needed.

State senators will vote on a budget proposal next Tuesday, but most expect it to fail because budgets need a two-thirds vote, including from some Republicans.

The proposal before senators includes tax increases and little in the way of cuts.

An executive order for the pay cut is expected to be issued the same day if no budget is approved.