Who would have guessed that the New York City Sanitation Department union's work slowdown during the Great Blizzard of 2011 would set the high water mark for public sector union civic responsibility? Since then, public sector union behavior has only gone downhill. In Wisconsin, a state facing a yawning multibillion-dollar deficit, the governor and the state legislature have attacked the problem where it is, in the excessive compensation paid to state employees. The unions engaged in an illegal strike and behaved as though they were millions of years behind the rest of us on the evolutionary scale. In Wisconsin, as elsewhere in the United States, the partnership between public sector unions and the Democratic Party has bankrupted the treasury/Michael Costello, Lewiston Tribune. More here.

Question: Has the public sector suffered as much as the private sector in terms of pay cuts, layoffs, and benefit reductions?