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California FAIL

by karlkatzke on December 5th, 2008

Talk about unintended consequences.

Facing a state budget crisis in July, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fired about 10,000 temporary and part-time workers and ordered the 200,000 permanent employees to be paid only the minimum wage of $6.55 an hour until the legislature passed a crisis-solving budget. However, a week later the State Controller John Chiang pointed out that state payroll records could not be changed to accommodate the cut because they were written in the antiquated COBOL computer language, and virtually the only state employees who knew the code were some of the part-timers Schwarzenegger had just fired.

Sacramento Bee, 5Aug08

From → punditry

One Comment
  1. Sounds like some newly unemployed state employees just became high-priced consultants.

    You gotta pay for COBOL.

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