Two for the Price of Three

I'm not sure why the Providence Journal is making such a big deal about public workers' overtime. My understanding is that such employees' benefits packages cost significantly more than 50% of their salaries, so it's cheaper to have them work extra hours than to bring on somebody new to share the workload. If there's a problem, it seems to me that the solution is to bring down benefits to a sufficiently reasonable level that it is more cost effective to spread the labor (and the wealth). That way, more people could make a reasonable amount of money doing a reasonable amount of work.