The State Worker

A Sacramento Superior Court judge has ruled that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's and the Department of Personnel Administration's refusal to recognize Lincoln's Birthday and Columbus Day as state paid holidays violated collective bargaining laws.

In the same decision, Judge Timothy Frawley said that overtime rule changes enacted by the Legislature and enforced by the administration were legal.

Today's decision affects about 105,000 state workers represented by unions that were party to the lawsuit: SEIU Local 1000, California Association of Professional Scientists and California Association of Psychiatric Technicians.

Frawley's final writ is pending, but CAPT attorney Steve Bassoff said that the decision means that state workers in bargaining units covered by those unions will get whatever holiday compensation is owed to them for time worked on Columbus Day last year or Lincoln's Birthday this year.

"Whatever their contract provides for, that's what's in effect," Bassoff said this afternoon.

The unions acknowledged that lawmakers and Schwarzenegger changed state law last year to eliminate Columbus Day and Lincoln's Birthday as paid holidays. They also acknowledge that their contracts expired long before the holiday legislation.

But the three unions told Frawley that the Dills Act, which spells out state labor contract rules, keeps the provisions of expired contracts in place until new terms are negotiated. They argued that the administration's actions -- which included disciplining anyone who continued treating the holidays as a paid day off -- violated the law.

SEIU President Yvonne Walker flatly told members last fall that, "October 12, 2009, is a holiday and employees should not come to work."

Frawley agreed that lawmakers didn't supersede the Dills Act with last year's holiday legislation. Since the union contracts specified Columbus Day and Lincoln's Birthday were paid days off, the compensation terms for those days remained in force.

Today Walker said, "It's unfortunate that these questions had to be asked and litigated.
at a significant cost to the state, especially when it didn't need to happen."

Walker predicted that the administration will appeal, "no doubt."

The State Worker has contacted the administration for comment. It's not clear what the administration's position will be regarding Columbus Day on Oct. 11.

An administration appeal would automatically freeze any back wage payments to state workers and could allow the state to continue the no-holiday policy while the case runs through the court system. The unions could ask the court to go ahead with paying state workers while the case is appealed.

Frawley's ruling covers Columbus Day holidays and Lincoln's Birthday holidays denied since February 2009. His ruling for CAPT excludes holidays occurring after July 1 of this year, since the union has agreed to a contract from that date through July 2012 that eliminates both holidays.

The judge sided with the administration's position that changes to the law that eliminated counting leave time toward the threshold for overtime was legal. That change was part of the same legislative package that eliminated the two paid holidays.