(full disclosure: I work for the Courage Campaign)

I wanted to report back on my post from Friday, warning that Gov. Schwarzengger was about to cut over 200,000 state worker's salaries down to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 -- a ploy in a political game being played by the Governor. He's trying to hold state workers hostage to try and place pressure on the Democrats instead of the Republicans who are holding up the budget.

Today, I have good news and bad news. It's Arnold's birthday. No, that's not the good news.

The good news is that over 28,000 of you stepped up and signed the petition to Schwarzenegger. The same day, he delayed signing the executive order that would have put the policy into effect.

The bad news is that he only delayed it to Thursday.

We delivered your petitions to the Governor on Monday and created a funny, snarky video you can see above, about our adventure trying to get someone to accept the darn petitions. It helped to have an Assemblymember along with us and a bunch of cameras and reporters, or else we would have been sent straight to the mailroom.

We have about 24 hours until the Governor signs the executive order. Which means we still have time today to pressure Arnold to stop holding state workers hostage to his political budget negotiation games.

On behalf of hundreds of thousands of state workers, please pick up your phone right now and call Arnold. Click here for the phone number and a form to report back your call.

UPDATE: We've already received some interesting call reports, like this one from Gary:

Staff member tried to convince me that things will be alright with our finances because my partner, who is a teacher, can get a zero-interest loan since the banks know that the employees will be getting the money eventually. I told her that we didn't want to be pawns in their political games and that the governor & legislature need to work it out. She said she would pass it along.