California State Controller John Chiang pleads poor technology in resisting wage cut
Posted by Mike on Saturday, July 10, 2010
Jul 10, 2010 (The Sacramento Bee – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) — In a world where newer and faster is touted as better, California state workers’ prospects for full pay rest partly on old and outdated technology.
The state whose Silicon Valley pioneered computer advances finds two of its top elected officials fighting over how quickly the state’s Vietnam War-era payroll system could be altered to handle a temporary pay cut.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered the wages of nearly 200,000 state workers chopped to the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour during the budget impasse, after which it would be restored.
State Controller John Chiang has balked, filing suit to argue that he cannot reasonably comply because of the old payroll system, deficiencies in the wording of the pay order, and an inherent conflict between state and federal law.
California’s payroll computer system is so old that it relies on programming language, Common Business Oriented Language, or COBOL, that was introduced in the late 1950s, popularized in the 1960s and 1970s, and is no longer routinely taught to programmers.
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