State Workers Making Minimum Wage?

If it can happen to state workers, it can happen to teachers. You watch!

State workers' pay can be cut to the federal minimum wage when lawmakers miss California's annual budget deadline, a Sacramento Superior Court judge has tentatively ruled.

Assuming the ruling stands, it's a win for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a fight that started last summer when Controller John Chiang refused to cut paychecks that paid about 200,000 hourly state workers $6.55 per hour, the federal minimum. Exempt or salaried employees would get $455 a week.

"(The tentative decision) is encouraging, and it's important so that the state has the ability to control spending in tough economic times," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear. "But we're awaiting the court's final decision"...

The administration pointed to a 2003 case, White v. Davis, in which the court decided that state workers have the right to their full wages but the law doesn't authorize their full pay until the money is appropriated in the state budget.

Fortunately it won't happen this year, because the state now has a (crappy) budget.