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California Can't Perform Pay Cut Because of COBOL
beezzie writes "Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered a pay cut, to minimum wage of $6.55/hr, for 200,000 state workers — because a state budget hadn't been approved yet. The state controller, who has opposed the pay cut on principle and legal grounds, now says the pay cut isn't even feasible because the state's payroll systems are so antiquated. He says it would take six months to go to minimum wage, and nine months more to restore salaries once a budget is passed. The system is based on COBOL, according to the Sacramento Bee, and the state hasn't yet found the funds or resources, in ten years of trying, to upgrade it." The article quotes a consultant on how hard it is to find COBOL programmers; he says you usually have to draw them out of retirement. Problem is, if there were any such folks on the employment rolls in California, Gov. Schwarzenegger fired them all last week, too.
It's a lot easier to just fire them with the software is what they are telling us.
Seriously if California is in a budget crisis how will they pay firefighters and hospital staff? You can pay everyone full wage now and in 10 months stop paying EVERYONE entirely.
In a business with this kind of budget problem you simply lay people off. People who work for the state are up in arms over this, but I've been laid off a number of times. You just fill out your unemployment insurance paperwork and get like 1/4 to 1/2 your salary after a few weeks, and look for a new job in the meantime.
I'm not sure why unions act like every person should be guaranteed a job. What universe you have to live in for things to be so certain?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
the problem is nobody in IT wants to hire old people.
You are right and the situation is even worse with more engineering oriented firms. Age discrimination in software/hardware is rampant and out of control. Partly it is institutional but often it is that the average 35 year old manager isn't even aware of his prejudices.
Those of you saying "how hard can it be to write a couple of lines of COBOL" are probably underestimating the problem.
If all they had to do was just lower people's salary to $6.whatever per hour, that wouldn't be the issue. The problem is they have to account for the ACTUAL salary the person should be making, because once the budget is passed they will have to pay all those people back for the salary that's owed.
So, there's a big issue here. They have to calculate their salary like they would anyway, and then pay them minimum wage for the number of hours actually worked (because I'd guess a number of State employees are "exempt"), remember how much they SHOULD have been paid and how much taxes SHOULD have been taken out, record that information, and then print out a check.
In a modern programming language with a modern relational database, no problem. In COBOL with an obsolete non-relational DB, perhaps even one with 80-column mindset? Yeah, right. Good luck with that.
While it's been nearly 5 years since I toiled in COBOL, I can assure you that much of the information infastructure you deal with on a daily basis still runs on legacy mainframe hardware with COBOL programs being fed your charge card data, airline reservations, utility usage, pharmaceutical claim adjudications, etc....
True. Or the "hire" would be at a rate of 50-60% of what that same programmer made previously. I still get soliciations for mainframe COBOL work and the rates and salaries advertised to me are an absolute joke.
Well, code is code, but I would caution that:
Most of the Y2K effort focused simply on alleviating eventual issues with two digit dates by "windowing". No expansion of existing database fields -- as much of the processing in legacy world on a fixed column basis, and lengthening the field was considered "out of scope" -- just a simple if statement to test if it was the 20th or 21st century. And regarding documentation, you're being glib, right? As staffs are downsized, support and application teams siphoned off to India or replaced by imported non-immigrant visa holders, documentation, which never was a top priority, has been given even shorter shrift.
A rather naive assertion. In legacy systems much of the business logic is embedded deep within the bowels of the code. There may be a "business analyst" who is the overseer, but they are totally reliant on somebody else who can actually read code. And it will be far from straightforward, even for a gifted wizard, as the code in question may be decades old, and littered with patches and interfaces placed on top of all the cruft.
AZspot
1)I asked how old were the guys were he thought weren't being given a fair shot. My grandfather wrote Payroll systems for large firms like Ben Franklin, and Montgommary(sp?) Ward. He wasn't stupid, he was a pioneer in the very field we are talking about: COBOL based payroll systems for large organizations.
2)I did not mean to imply that smart people didn't work on COBOL, or that all of them ended up like my grandfather. I just wanted a further explanation of who he thought were being discriminated against. If you asked my grandfather, he would say its because of his age, rather than the lack of his qualifications. There are a fair number of COBOL programmers of his era that are his age. I'm not sure there is a very large population of COBOL programmers that are not able to find work, solely because of their age.
3)Are you implying that I read the dummies books for Java and Databases? Ouch. that wasn't nice. Not sure what that has to do with the price of wheat in Thailand, but thanks for sharing your thoughts. Ironically, you remind me a lot of my Grandfather. When he starts losing an argument he switches to personal attacks on his opponents education and qualifications. Learn form his mistakes: don't become a bitter old man who hurts those who love him the most.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I think what Arnold wants to do is a crock
It's a question of whether the government of California even has the authority to pay people. The law in California, as ruled by the Supreme Court of California, seems to require what the Governor has ordered, and what the Controller is refusing to do:
Though the 69-page Supreme Court decision [in White v. Davis] addressed many legal arguments, its conclusion was unequivocal. "State law does not authorize the controller to disburse state funds to employees until an applicable appropriation" - a state budget - "has been enacted," the court stated. Once a budget is in place, the employees must receive back pay. And to comply with federal law, the court added, during a budget impasse the state must pay hourly workers the federal minimum wage and those who work overtime time-and-a-half pay.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10005275?nclick_check=1
Well, I work here I am affected by this threat of minimum wage. Bleh.
I can tell you the problem is this. They don't want to preserve or change the current system. "sure continued changes COULD be done to the old one.. but why?"
They NEED a new one. The old one has served its purpose. Now take the payroll program and multiply by 100.
That is how many of these programs and problems we have out there. I have a 15 year old sign program. It's sole purpose is to manipulate those fancy signs you see on the freeway. "slow down.. amber alert etc" This program was created by a student who left a few years later. Of course said student took the source with him and we've been stuck for 13 years making this dos program work on the varying versions of windows.
Now a program can be purchased for 30K "per district x12" that would let us control these older sign controllers as well as the new signs.
We can't buy it. It is never a priority to replace an OLD program that still sort of functions. In fact it's usually at the bottom of the needs/wants list. yet the state spends 2million to put CMS's "changeable message signs" every half mile in a fog area.
This is roughly the same problem the controller runs into. He can use the old system. It doesn't matter who the controller is, When Davis tried to do the same thing the problem existed then. The system was not created for making these type of payroll changes. We don't hire cobol programmers. Heck we really don't have anyone coding programs any more. It's all web-dev and off the shelf applications. Guess what? We're in a hiring freeze as well. So it's not like we could hire anyone to do it anyways!
So if you want to work for free and offer your expertise we do allow that. But if you want to keep all the source then no-thanks!
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