Some public sector union abuses are not only alive and well, but more egregious than ever.

In Connecticut, state employees are retiring with pension benefits higher than their last salary. How? It's a classic scheme known as "spiking."

Tens of thousands of Connecticut state employees enjoy the unlimited right to spike overtime — that is, to work enormous hours of overtime just before retirement for the sole purpose of boosting the pensions calculation, which includes overtime pay in immediate pre-retirement years.

And that’s not all. Under Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D), unionized state employees have enjoyed six consecutive annual pay raises, compounding to a whopping 33 percent. It is no coincidence that state employee wages have climbed the rankings to second place among the states. Nationally, private sector pay has increased only 23 percent over this span. Recently, Lamont promised his union allies “every year I’m here, you’re going to get a raise.”

Perhaps we should not be surprised, since Connecticut’s public sector is the second-most-heavily unionized of the states.

In general, states have been eliminating or gradually phasing out overtime-spiking. In the most unionized public sector state, neighboring New York, former governors David Patterson (D) and Andrew Cuomo (D) instituted........

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