Chavez Day no holiday for Calif. governor

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 30 (UPI) -- Critics are seeing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to work on California's Cesar Chavez Day as a step to possibly eliminate the holiday.

County and state workers have Thursday off in honor of Chavez, the farm labor leader. The State Assembly will be in session, but took Monday off in Chavez's name. But the governor plans to report for duty, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

"Certainly there is no better homage to Cesar Chavez than working," Schwarzenegger press secretary Margita Thompson said Tuesday.

Schwarzenegger has proposed the money-saving move of eliminating two the 13 holidays marked by the state. Each holiday costs the state $46.5 million. Cesar Chavez Day, instituted by Gov. Gray Davis in 2000, is the newest of the state holidays.

"They may try to eliminate it," Steve Maviglio, spokesman for Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, told the Mercury News. "The governor's relationship with the Latino community is poor to begin with and that's probably another nail in that coffin."