Nurse makes $270,000.00 (California government employee)

“It’s just a mess,” said Pellissier, now head of a group pushing for changes in public employee pensions. “The way the state establishes its pay classifications is very complex and often obscure. What we need is transparency and disclosure and a fair accounting of what those costs are so we know if we are paying the right amount for labor.”
Among those who got large payouts are a prison doctor who cashed out more than $590,000 of vacation time when he retired, a computer specialist in the Legislature’s legal office who got $61,905 in overtime on top of his $71,560 salary, a psychiatrist for the Developmental Services Department who received $97,700 in extra-duty pay and the head of the state gambling commission, who banked $169,623 in unused holiday pay.

Collective Bargaining
Collective-bargaining rights granted to state workers by Governor Jerry Brown, a 73-year-old Democrat, when he first held the office three decades ago made it more difficult to pursue cost-cutting measures such as eliminating extra pay allowances or privatizing prisons.
Union-backed provisions, among other things, allow employees to collect as much as $1,200 in “arduous duty” pay for projects requiring long hours and, in the case of prison guards, receive a $130-a-month fitness bonus for getting annual physical exams, even if they aren’t fit.

Unpaid Days Off
State rules allow employees to cash out unused vacation at their highest salary levels regardless of when the time was accrued. Cash-strapped departments have held off hiring new staff, pushing existing workers to put in extra hours to get the jobs done.
Three unpaid days off each month, instituted by Schwarzenegger, helped depress regular wages paid last year and forced overtime compensation for employees, such as prison guards, who had to work through them. The first six months of the furloughs, for instance, cost California $52 million in accrued vacation time for prison guards alone, according to findings by the state Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes.
New York also paid its employees more than their normal pay in 2010 -- though less than in California. New York state workers took in about $1.5 billion above regular pay, or about $9,348 per employee on average, compared with $10,643 in California, a comparison of the states’ pay databases shows.
In California, the amount of extra compensation grew from $1.67 billion in 2008 to $1.7 billion last year. In 2007, the year the state budget reached its record high, employees got $1.9 billion in additional pay, according to the California controller’s office.
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