In a lengthy and detailed e-mail to its members on Thursday, CASE lays out what's happening with contract talks ("... the Bargaining Team will continue to negotiate ..."), litigation ("... we have filed numerous briefs in our various furlough lawsuits ...") and minimum wage ("... , it is possible that pay for the July pay period ... could be in jeopardy ...")
In an analysis of the promise made by Schwarzenegger that unions with tentative agreements won't be subject to minimum wage, the CASE letter notes:
The deals also come with a "commitment" from the Administration that their members will not be subject to additional furloughs during the term of the deal, nor would they be subjected to the threat of minimum wage. However we have heard that these commitments are not actually contained within the four corners of the tentative contracts. While we are working on obtaining the actual text of the tentative deals, these "commitments" raise a number of questions, including:
1) How can an outgoing overnor assure employees that his successor will not try to furlough employees if next year's budget situation is no better than this year's?
2) How can the Governor assure individual units that they will not be subjected to minimum wage/no wage? Under the Governor's legal theory, White v. Davis prohibits any payment to state employees without an appropriation. In the absence of a budget for FY 2010-2011, there is no legal authority for the Governor to single out particular groups of state employees to be exempt from his minimum wage threat.
3) Given the Legislature's historical aversion of continuing appropriation legislation, what assurances do the units with tentative agreements have that the continuing appropriation bills promised by the Governor will not be significantly delayed or even defeated in the Legislature?
Click here to read the CASE e-mail.
Thanks to blog users J, D, L and E for sending along this info.
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