Nationally, the 1970s were marked by tumultuous labor strikes and increases in employee benefits and compensation. In California, Brown boosted state employee pay by 8.5 percent, cut the governor’s office budget by $210,000, and slashed funding for California’s state universities.
Today, Brown will again target higher education for cuts, decrease his administration’s spending by $5 million, and seek to create jobs in both the private and public sectors. California currently has 350,609 state employees – at least 140,000 more workers than it had in 1975, when there were 206,361.
