That’s what the New York Post is reporting:
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.
Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts.
“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.
This would be a delicious story, and I hate to pour cold water on it, but I’m skeptical. This sort of thing is done all the time in Europe — screw the public to show your union’s power — but it’s always done openly. Doing it in secret doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. What would it accomplish?
(Via Instapundit.)
Internet Scofflaw 
I’m not sure I read this as a union action because the articles I’ve seen say that supervisors (i.e., management) were instructing their workers to leave streets unplowed, etc. Could it be the “lowerarchy” of the sanitation department was working to protect itself?
Further on my previous comment: I saw a post referring to the “sanitation supervisors union.” So perhaps it is a union action after all.