"Look for...the union label..."

Yet another example of why government employees ought not be allowed to join unions.

Assuming that this is true, what kind of liability should the givers of those instructions face?

Selfish Sanitation Department bosses from the snow-slammed outer boroughs ordered their drivers to snarl the blizzard cleanup to protest budget cuts -- a disastrous move that turned streets into a minefield for emergency-services vehicles, The Post has learned.
...
"They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important," said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), who was visited yesterday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the shameless plot. Halloran said he met with three plow workers from the Sanitation Department -- and two Department of Transportation supervisors who were on loan -- at his office after he was flooded with irate calls from constituents. The snitches "didn't want to be identified because they were afraid of retaliation," Halloran said. "They were told [by supervisors] to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file."
...
The workers said the work slowdown was the result of growing hostility between the mayor and the workers responsible for clearing the snow...The result was an absolute collapse of New York's once-vaunted systems of clearing the streets and keeping mass transit moving under the weight of 20 inches of snow.
...
Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser said only: "We would hope this is not the case." But multiple Sanitation Department sources told The Post yesterday that angry plow drivers have only been clearing streets assigned to them even if that means they have to drive through snowed-in roads with their plows raised. And they are keeping their plow blades unusually high, making it necessary for them to have to run extra passes, adding time and extra pay. One mechanic said some drivers are purposely smashing plows and salt spreaders to further stall the cleanup effort.

Obviously, they're causing untold millions of man-hours of lost wages and productivity, never mind the simple inconvenience. But, in case you missed this story, it's even worse.

A blizzard baby delivered inside the lobby of a snowbound Brooklyn building died after an emergency call of a woman in labor brought no help for nine excruciating hours.

The baby's mother, a 22-year-old college senior, was recovering Tuesday night at Interfaith Medical Center, where her newborn was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m. on Monday. That was 10 hours after the first 911 call from the bloody vestibule on Brooklyn Ave. in Crown Heights.

"No one could get to her. Crown Heights was not plowed, and no medical aid came for hours," said the student's mother.

Did someone give the orders to slowdown the work? And if so, is that person criminally liable for the death of that child? I'm thinking that, if they could prove the former, there's certainly a plaintiff's lawyer somewhere who'd be happy to go to court over the latter...


(H/T: Instapundit)