From the governor’s news conference today
And announced a 10% pay cut to state workers to help recover from decreased revenues.
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Including CAL Fire personnel
“SEIU President Walker said Newsom’s office informed her of the proposed cut on Wednesday. Tim Edwards, president of the union representing state firefighters, said the proposal would not spare them even as the state enters wildfire season.”
I understand that the situation is bad regarding the money coming into the state. I was honestly prepared for a 5% cut to hit us. But 10% will take captains down to starting engineer pay. I’m not sure that firefighters make enough over min wage to even have their pay cut 10%.
In addition to fire season coming many cal fire employees have also been on the front lines of the covid19 pandemic.
Further it’s not like state workers don’t spend their money in the state. Cutting the spending power of the largest group of employees in the state seems counter productive to infusing money back into local business.
It’s better than being out of work but it’s gonna hurt.
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PLP’s on the horizon again prolly. More vacay time!!
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I doubt we will see 10% cuts, like others have said our firefighters already make minimum wage.
What I do expect is 5% PLP program to come back or a furlough program to be implemented, which would just cause more overtime and more income. I personally am in favor of the PLPs an extra 12 days off a year was nice and i gladly traded that for 5% last time the state needed money.
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When you did the math, PLPs were the best deal the state ever gave out for Calfire…not so much for others.
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PLP are like putting lipstick on a pig. All the PLP does is allow the state to cut wages today but will cost 1 1/2 to twice as much tomorrow.
A FF getting 12 PLP days that doesn’t use all of them, then get to use, cash out later at a higher rank. Only puts the state is a deeper hole.
PLUS its not like there are extra personal available on straight time to fill the hole. So the backfill is on time & half OT actually costing the state more. It’s the reason alone that the VPLP program was eliminated from the last contract.
Remember, the VPLP/PLP was 5% cut in pay for 1 extra day off per PP, 13 extra days per year.
How many people still have PLP/VPLP days on the books they are holding onto for retirement?
How many people are over the 660hr of AAV that is against policy, yet they can’t burn the time due to “Operational Needs”?
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When I said best deal, I was referring to the employee, yes it sucked for the state. Most rank and file loved them for all the reason you stated. Don’t want to side track the thread and I only worked in 4 units but I never had an issue with getting ad hoc/pre-planned time off, within the bounds of allowed # of persons off. If/When we were at max off and there were extras, it was still “have a good time!”. I worked for mostly admin Chiefs that followed the contract and weren’t d***s. YMMV.
If the 10% cut hits (even with PLPs), you’ll see a significant amount of Chief Officers from CF retire ASAP. It won’t make sense for them to stay on the job…
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Yup,
The exodus will only make a bad problem that much worse when it comes to promotions & training.
Anyone get a definitive answer on the 26 new engines? Are the NEW(Additional) or NEW(Replacement) the budget posted shows 193 new additional position’s but not where or what they are for.
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Adding additional positions but giving CF a 10% cut is insane. I’m curious as well to where these will end up. I also heard a minimum of 8 CDCR camps to close down.
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The budget posted projects 8 camps closing.
The Governor on Wed during his Press conference said the state is currently shot 44 crews. But projections say that number will rose to 80 crews. Hence the reason to close camps.
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Close 8 and looking to consolidate camps not at max level. Should be interesting for the Captains.
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I don’t know what their contract with PERS is, but ours was highest paid year. Not too many agencies have last year any more.
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Since the last downfall they took up to a 20% cut and now need their top 3 highest years; no longer two.
You have good points. The argument that tax dollars being spent in the economy is some sort of economic stimulus is a fallacy plane and simple. Taxes collected then injected into the economy can provide a very short term stimulus but not over any sustained period.
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I would say that the spending by the federal government during WWII would show otherwise. It would not have made a difference for the economy had we dumped all the tanks, planes, ammo, and ships into the ocean. The mass spending on the war effort still would have dug us out of the Great Depression.
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I have 44 holiday.
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