From a New York Times news article about two New York City Department of Sanitation employees who were fined and retired from the agency after reportedly soliciting and accepting tips of $5 each from a city resident who left out more than a usual amount of curbside garbage:
According to SeeThroughNY.net, which lists New York municipal salaries, each man earned over $100,000, including overtime, in 2011.
The sanitation workers apparently had some accumulated seniority — one had been on the job since 1986, another since 1990. In years with a lot of snow, sanitation workers in New York do well with overtime. Even so, though, and even in New York City in 2013, wages of more than $100,000 for front-line sanitation workers seem high by private-sector standards for this sort of work, and probably contribute to New York's high taxes.