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(AP) Employees reacted to an executive order Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Thursday, laying off more than 10,000 temporary, part-time and contract employees and temporarily paying as many as 200,000 state employees the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour until an agreement on the overdue state budget is reached. Unions challenged his authority to do that in filings filed Friday.
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Celeste Knox, 39, made $15.98 an hour in her position as a temporary office assistant with the Department of Consumer Affairs.

The single mother of two completed the purchase of a $167,500 three-bedroom home Wednesday morning, then learned just hours later that she would be laid off.

"Now I can't pay my mortgage. I can't pay anything—lights, gas, food. So I guess I'm going on a diet," Knox said. "I haven't slept, I haven't ate. I've just been crying and trying to find a way to make it work. So far I haven't found one."

She blamed state lawmakers, rather than Schwarzenegger, for failing to pass a budget on time.

"I expected our Legislature to do what we elected our Legislature to do," she said. "I feel like I was left out in the cold. It's a horrible mess."
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Dhia Woodruff, 21, had been earning $12.78 an hour working 40 hours a week in the mailroom of the Office of State Publishing before she was laid off Thursday.

"They just said don't come to work tomorrow," Woodruff said.

She was not optimistic about her chances of getting another job soon, and worried about making her car payments and paying rent to her mother, a state employee now facing the prospect of earning $6.55 an hour.

"I'm counting on a little bit of unemployment and trying to find a part-time job. Since there's so many people out trying to find jobs, I don't know..."
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Mark Swabey, 53, a full-time CalTrans worker who would be subjected to the wage rollback, said he was most worried about the employees who were laid off.

"That's despicable. It's outrageous. He had no reason to lay off, as a group, some of our lowest paid workers. They're not making much anyway, and now they're making nothing," Swabey said.

He said Schwarzenegger's order to pay hundreds of thousands of state employees $6.55 an hour could affect the entire state economy.

"It's foreclosure wages. We have a housing crisis here in California and it just got worse."
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Mimi Febres, 40, choked back tears during a union protest as she related moving from Vallejo to Sacramento six weeks ago to take a job at the Department of Motor Vehicles headquarters.

"I came to the state for security and benefits. Look where we are. It is personal. I was told yesterday I have no job," Febres said. "We just put a deposit on an apartment. Now we have to move out."

She joined several hundred other state workers outside the Capitol carrying signs and shouting, "We're not pawns" and "We can't survive on $6.55."

Pedro Leon, 52, of Sacramento, has worked 31 years as a printing press operator at the Department of Justice. He expects to take an 80 percent pay cut if he begins receiving only the federal minimum wage.

"I'll be lucky if I have enough money to eat, let alone pay my bills," said Leon, flanked by his wife, Susannah. "This would just harm the whole state of California and bring the economy to its knees."

The couple's two adult children live at home, and the family has little savings.

"Nobody knew it was coming," said Susannah Leon, who is not employed outside the home. "If he doesn't get a paycheck, I don't have a roof over my head."

(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)