CA Assembly Speaker Trashes Gov.'s Minimum Wage Plan

California's Speaker of the Assembly is calling out the governor's plan to cut state workers pay to minimum wage. Schwarzenegger plans to slash some 200,000 employees' pay starting next month.

"There is no budget savings, by moving those workers into minimum wage," said California's Democratic Speaker of the Assembly John Perez. "There's no budget savings whatsoever."  Click to Listen

Perez is going after Republican Governor Schwarzenegger's plan to start slashing state workers pay to $7.25 an hour as to help balance the state's $19 billion budget shortfall.

More than two weeks into the new fiscal year, the two parties remain far from agreement, and Perez says the minimum wage plan won't help since workers would eventually be paid back.

"This is purely a negotiating tactic and one that I think has little merit," said Perez.

Analysts say Schwarzenegger is hammering home a message to public employee unions that he wants any agreement to include an overhaul of their costly pensions.

The same Sacramento judge who last year ruled in support of the governors furlough plan says she'll publish a decision Friday on arguments against the minimum wage paychecks.