Imagine it's Christmas 2009. A year ago Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to furlough you and your fellow state workers one day each month and take two paid holidays off the calendar.
Legislators and the unions said no. The governor did it anyway. He declared a state of emergency, added another furlough day and told you – right before Christmas, no less – that you might lose your job.
In February you started taking the first and third Wednesdays off without pay. That chopped your $3,333 monthly check by about $330.
Then you got word that everyone in your job class might be cut. The actual layoff notice arrived three months later. To stay with the state, you bumped someone from their lower-paying job with less service time.
The person you bumped did the same thing to someone else. Your move and hers were just two tiny ripples in a statewide cascade that rammed thousands of people down the pay scale and pushed hundreds more out the door.
Those displaced state workers appealed. Some filed lawsuits. You moved from Sacramento to Fresno County for an accounting technician job with Corrections and Rehabilitation. The state covered your moving expenses, thanks to a deal negotiated by your union.
You wonder: How much did all of this cost the state?
Back to the present: Our scenario is based on the state's complex civil service rules and a talk with Douglas Roberts, Michigan's state treasurer from 1991 to 1998 and again from 2001 to 2002.
Roberts helped steer Michigan through layoffs and furloughs in 1991 as part of then-Gov. John Engler's administration. Engler, a Republican, won office by promising to fix Michigan's $1 billion budget shortfall without raising taxes. In his first six months, he axed 2,000 of the state's 65,000 civil service jobs and furloughed 35,000 workers.
"I had about 1,600 people in my department. We put out notices and people started bumping each other, much like they can in California," said Roberts, now the director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University in East Lansing. "It was painful and messy. The unions were livid."
About 400 people took demotions. Another 30 left. Morale tanked.
Several months later, Roberts' department gathered for its annual Christmas party.
"It was always popular, but that year about two-thirds of the staff boycotted it," he said. "It took some people a year, two years to get over what happened. And some people never got over it."
So how much would layoffs cost California in terms of worker morale and productivity? It's impossible to quantify. But you have to wonder, as state workers peer into an uncertain 2009, how much has all the talk about furloughs and job losses already cost the state?
Call The Bee's Jon Ortiz, (916) 321-1043. Read his blog, The State Worker, at sacbee.com/blogs.
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